Life With Mars
by runaway scrape
Summary: A three-way crossover with Veronica Mars, Life, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Two Potentials are called to Sunnydale, but in their way stand the Bringers. Thank heavens they've got Veronica Mars and Dani Reese on their side.
1. The Haves and Have-Nots

_**Disclaimer:**_ _Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Life, and Veronica Mars are owned by their respective creators, production companies, and distributors. This is a wholly amateur work and no copyright infringement is intended._

 **Neptune, CA  
**  
Let's get some things straight: in Neptune, California, there are the haves and have-nots, and while most people see the divide between those-who-have-money-and-lots-of-it and those-who-don't, when you work as freelance high school detective, you find out pretty quickly that there are a lot of different kinds of have-nots, and some of them are a lot worse than not having money.

Little Lucy Sinclair stood in front of me waiting for my verdict. She lived with her mom in one of the nicer condo developments in town, the kind very rich people use as a vacation home for attending golf tournaments or just to get away from LA, but not away-away. Her mom, screen name Tiffany St. Claire, was a third-run D-list actress who'd faded into obscurity and barely rated a mention on Remember the 90s for her string of parts in the original Slasher trilogy. Lucy had a lot of things - money, intelligence, good grades, and the favor of all the AP teachers - but she was definitely a have-not, and she'd come to me to find at least one of the things on her Not list.

"Will you take my case?" she asked.

I looked over the slender contents of the file she gave me. A copy of her birth certificate, father's name entered as "unknown". A copy of a picture of what might have been her mom's wedding, though it was hard to tell, what with the picture torn in half and missing whoever might have been the groom. A xerox of a xerox of a newspaper picture published well before Lucy was born, showing her mom in the clutch of a muscular, smiling man with a well trimmed beard. Someone had taken a marker to the photo's tagline, so no help there.

"It's kind of thin," I said, giving her a look.

"It's all I can find," she apologized.

Lucy did that a lot. Apologized. Other kids took advantage of it, which bugged me, but, hey, you can't take on the whole world. I, for one, don't have the closet space.

I sighed.

"Okay, I'll do a preliminary search," I told her. "Look up what I can in the Bureau of Vital Statistics and see if there are any leads from there."

"He set up his trust for me in LA county, too," she said. "There has to be something in the official record."

"I'll check on that as well," I said, "but no promises. Okay? You know my rates?"

"Oh, sure." And she broke into a dazzling, happy smile. She took out an envelope and handed it to me without checking the contents. "That should be enough for a week."

I almost choked on my gum. A full week's worth of work, paid upfront? Looked like me and Dad would be splitting some bonafide delivery pizza. None of that frozen stuff.

I made the envelope disappear and took a look around. This early in the second semester, there wasn't a lot going on after classes let out. Most of the seniors disappeared as fast as they could. Little Lucy, being a freshman, had classes scheduled to the end of the day, and here we were, an hour after the last bell. Only the janitors were still on campus in voluntarily.

"How do you get home?" I asked.

"Oh, I walk," she answered, hugging her binder. "I like walking, especially when the weather's nice."

It's not like Neptune is that big of a town, but Lucy's walk would take her through a fairly questionable part, and it was already dark. And Little Lucy was actually on the small side - no taller or more muscular than I was. She also had that air of not being exactly on this planet. It's more like she's taking a stroll on the planet Disney, and while little tweety birds that light on your finger and chirp in harmony with you are pretty awesome, it does not do much to scare off the local gangbanger population.

"Come on," I said. "I'll give you a ride."

Fatal mistake, Mars. Fatal. Mistake.

 **Los Angeles, CA  
**  
It was pink.

She refused to stare, because she knew that's exactly what her partner hoped she would do. He was dying for her to ask, so therefore, she wouldn't ask. He'd have to pull his gun on her before she would ask.

He held it up as if contemplating the ethereal beauty of it. Then he flipped open his knife, drove it into the fruit, and began cutting it.

"You're not going to ask?" he asked.

"I am not going to ask," she answered.

"That's fine."

She ground her teeth.

"What do you think of Cooper?" he asked, cutting out a chunk of crispy white flesh dotted with tiny black seeds.

"I think Tidwell is right," she answered. "Which I will kill you if you repeat in his hearing. But clearly, Cooper is hiding something, and it's probably got nothing to do with the case. He just has a bad case of messed up priorities and thinks it's more important that his wife not find out he's banging her cousin than we have an actual alibi for him."

"Which do you think is worse," Crews started, gazing at the piece of fruit, "I mean, if it were you. Is it worse that he's cheating on you, or worse that he's cheating on you with your own cousin, or is it worse that he's cheating on you with your own cousin, and it's your own male cousin?"

"I'd like to think I'm not a bigot," Reese answered. "Besides, I'm know that if he were cheating on me with my own cousin, male or female, my aunts and uncles would kill him and then ask me how I'd like his body disposed of. My cousin, male or female, would be lucky to get out of it with a beating."

"Ah, you see? Family. You can't beat family." He munched on his bite of strange fruit, happily considering the joys of family. "Well, unless it's the cousin. Then I guess you can beat him."

"Exactly," she agreed, then she dusted her hands off and got to her feet. "Look, long day. Tons of stuff to do in the morning. I'll see you then."

He grinned at her and waved another piece of white fruit flesh on the tip of his knife at her. She gathered her stuff up and headed off to her car.

"Oh, hey, Reese?" he called.

"Yeah?" she turned back.

"It's a dragonfruit," he told her. "Also called a pitaya."

"I did not ask," she said, grimly pointing a finger at him. "I. Did. NOT. Ask."

"Of course not," he agreed, "but sometimes truth finds us even when we don't want it to."

She turned and kept walking, refusing to answer.

 **Neptune, CA  
**  
Because I'd already been home, Backup was waiting for me in the car. Instead of getting nervous like a lot of people do around a pit bull, Lucy only blinked a couple of times and then squeed with delight. Backup lunged to get at her, panting and straining at his collar. I let Lucy give him some hugs. Props to the kid. Thinking about it, I couldn't remember ever seeing her scared. Sad, lonely, and discouraged as a little wallflower who never got asked to dance at the Wallflower Cotillion, but not scared. Huh.

"All right, all right," I said, shoving Backup back into the backseat of my fragrant car. "You're riding shotgun. You'll have to give me directions."

"Okay," she said, grinning. "Hey, would you like to stop at one of the Starbucks on the way? My treat."

"Uh," I managed.

Geez Lou-eeze, this kid had a serious case of the lonelies, and I had to discourage her. She might have been on the bottom rung of the social ladder, but to reach the nadir of my pariah status, you had to climb off the ladder and start digging a hole. Should I recap? Best friend murdered, ex-boyfriend convinced he might be my half-brother, father fired from his job of sheriff over investigating the wrong person, crashed a party and was drugged and raped, ID'd the killer, dated the killer's occasionally psycho son, and was now dealing with a busload of classmates gone off a cliff. If I worked hard, I might just parlay it into a back-to-back championship of the persona non grata competition. Being seen with me was not going to do her any favors.

"You know, I've got another case I have to work tonight," I lied. "So it's best if I just drop you off."

"Oh," Lucy said.

She looked about three inches tall.

And because I am a gutless, spineless wimp whose heart is just a big sopping sponge of guilt, I ground my teeth and relented.

"Of course, there's always enough time for the drivethru," I announced.

I let her pay.

While we were paused at a light, enjoying our careful hot beverages, my client turned contemplative.

"Veronica, do you ever have weird dreams?" she asked, studying her whipped cream with itty bitty chocolate chips.

"Weird like Gilligan keeps stealing my shoes because he wants to start an all-sailor crossdressing revue?" I asked back. "Because that one comes up surprisingly often."

"No, more like really, really real dreams, like you know you're dreaming, and everything's really vivid, and people tell you things you want to remember when you wake up, but you can't," she answered.

"Can't say that I have," I said, keeping an eye on the traffic. Like I said, not a good neighborhood, even if it did have the only Starbucks with a drivethru in Neptune. "What do you think you're supposed to remember?"

Backup woofed softly and sat up, looking around. That got my attention. He was watching a spot across the street, between the autoparts store and the discount dentist, where the shadows were too thick to see into. You could have hidden a KPop boy band in there and had room leftover for a plastic surgeon convention.

"Like, I'm supposed to go someplace," Lucy said, frowning in thought. "And meet someone? And that . . . maybe there's something bad looking for me."

Now, see, that deserved my full attention. Dad once said something about clients who brought you a small to medium sized problem because they couldn't figure out how to tell you about the extra-large problem scaring them silly. I'm pretty sure he also said something about 'run away very fast' when dealing with those clients, but Backup started whining, high pitched and curious. He shifted his weight, licked his chops, and then checked to make sure I had seen whatever he'd seen. Except I hadn't, and I was starting to worry.

"It's stupid," Lucy said, shrugging, when I didn't answer.

"It's not stupid," I told her, taking the green arrow to pull out onto the main drag. Then I started channeling my dad. "Whatever that voice is, you listen to it. Trust your instinct. Trust your gut. It'll keep you alive."

Lucy's home was several blocks off the thoroughfare, and as we left the scarier part of town behind, the manicured streets seemed awfully dark. My eyes kept getting dragged off the road by what could have been harmless shadows, but my scalp started to tighten and tingle. The complex Lucy lived in was behind some seriously well guarded walls. She handed me the access card, and as I swiped us in, something moved through the yard opposite, fast. Backup woofed, and it wasn't his 'hey, what's up' woof either.

"What was that?" Lucy asked.

"I don't know," I said, grabbing my Taser, "but hang tight."

The gate clanged shut behind us, and that's when they hit. One of them dropped onto the hood, denting it. Two more - one on each side - tried to come through the doors.

"WHAT THE FR-"

The one on the hood punched through the windshield.

Punched.

Through the windshield.

It's days like these, my dad would say, that I shoulda stood in bed.

 **Los Angeles, CA  
**  
It had been a long day, and there was still stuff to do. Unfortunately, much of the stuff meant stopping by her parents' house before she could go home. As far as she knew, her father still wasn't speaking to her, but since he'd disappeared a few weeks back, her mother was happy to let her step foot inside her childhood home.

Sometimes, she wondered if even the angry, vindictive shadow she'd grown up with was anything more than a projected fake. Sometimes, she wondered if even her mother had any idea what kind of man her father was.

She stopped at the corner bodega and picked up a large horchata, easy on the ice, just like her mama liked it. The beer cooler tugged at her senses, but she deliberately turned her back on it. After all, if you couldn't stay sober when things were actually mostly good (never mind the insane partner, the insanity of screwing her boss and actually starting to like him as a person, and the missing father), then how were you going to stay sober on a bad day?

Once she pulled onto the street she'd grown up on, two blocks away from the Los Angeles river, five blocks away from Compton, she kept her speed below ten miles per hour. It was self-preservation really, and she was rewarded when two boys dashed directly in front of her, chasing a soccer ball. She managed to pile on the brakes hard enough to keep from hitting them. A teenage girl came out directly after them and started berating them.

"Hey, estupido! You want your brains all over the ground?" she yelled at the boys and grabbed an arm apiece. "Your mamas will make me clean them up and dump them back inside your no good heads, and I don't care if I get them in the right ones!"

"Euw," the younger boy cried, "I don't want none of Eduardo's brains! He picks his nose!"

Reese rested her forehead on the steering wheel for a moment. She really, really could have used a quiet evening, but the thought of the universe giving her what she needed was fairly laughable. Finally, over an escalating shouting match of who had the more disgusting brain, Reese put the car in park, applied the brake, opened the door, and stepped out.

"Hey, Arizay," she called.

The girl, fifteen years old, looked up and grinned at her. She was what Reese's father liked to call an exercise in general principle. He never said it in a friendly way, either.

"Hey, it's the Po-Po!" Arizay declared. "Look at me, officer," and here she lifted both boys up by their arms, "I'm performin' a community service."

"Yeah, that's great, Arizay," Reese agreed. "Look, could you move the performance out of the public street and onto, say, some grass?"

Arizay gave her a dose of fake outrage.

"You think me and my neighbors are growing pot, Officer? That's racist!"

Reese groaned. Arizay was not a bad kid. Not exactly. She could, in fact, be a real sweetheart. Reese's mom adored her. What she was, though, was a complete time sink. Any interaction with her could be counted on taking five times longer than it would with a normal human being.

"You know, you're probably right," Reese conceded. "But it's been a long day of unjustified shootings of unarmed civilians, and I'm afraid my public relations skills are in the toilet right now. So, if it's not too much trouble for you, Ms. Unarmed Totally Not A Chola Civilian, please remove yourself and your cousins from the vicinity of my front bumper so that I do not have to fill in the paperwork for an unjustified running over of a bunch of unarmed civilians. I would really appreciate it.

Arizay relented and dragged her two cousins out of the street, ignoring their protests of "Ow, you're hurting my arm, woman!" and "I'm totally telling Tia Lakiesha on you!" and kicking the soccer ball out of the street and down the slender sidewalk between a rusted out Dodge and a cluster of giant birds-of-paradise. Reese breathed a sigh of relief, got back in her car, and drove it up onto the driveway three houses down.

Her mother came out of the kitchen and onto the covered drive, drying her hands.

"Dani!" she said, holding her arms wide.

Short as she was, Detective Dani Reese was still taller than her petite Mayan mother. She gave her a big hug and then handed over the horchata.

"Oh, so thoughtful, baby," her mama crooned. "I was just telling Arizay yesterday that she should talk to you about becoming a police officer."

Dani managed not to choke in surprise. She did cough.

"That's an . . . interesting idea," she said.

"But she'd be a wonderful police officer," Rosalinda Reese told her. "She keeps an eye on all her cousins, even the older ones, and keeps all of them in line. Her cousin, Eli, was up here last weekend, and she was bossing him aruond."

"Because she's bossy, mama," Dani answered, relaxing into the rhythm of home life. "That's what she does."

"Oh, she's not bad," her mother said.

"She's going to end up either the CEO of an international equity fund or the head of the Sinaloa Cartel, and I honestly couldn't say which is more terrifying," she replied.

That's when the screaming started.


	2. Mr Gazpacho Takes A Dive

Neptune, CA

Backup went insane, scrambling over the armrest to sink his teeth into the hand that punched through the windshield. The hand coming through my window grabbed at me, missing a handful of my hair and jacket by less than an inch. I jammed the contact points of my Taser against the skin and pulled the trigger and gave Mister Creeper the full load. At the same time, I heard Lucy grunt indelicately, and something over on her side snapped with a sound like a broom handle broken across someone's knee.

"HANG ON!" I screamed and jammed down on the accelerator.

The arm through my window disappeared. Main Mister Creeper on the hood fell forward onto the windshield, giving Backup a chance to get a better grip on his arm. The clatter and slapping from Lucy's side made me think her attacker had been dragged a few yards before letting go.

"VERONI-" Lucy squealed.

The retaining wall on the other side of the wide entrance intersection came up really fast, and I hit the brakes as hard as I'd hit the accelerator. Harder, even, since I practically stood up on the pedal. My car was too old for anti-lock braking, so the wheels locked, and we skidded all the way up to the curb, coming less than a foot or so from the painted cinderblock wall. The good news was that while that was happening with the car, Man On Hood was thrown forward, hit the wall head first, and was caught between the front bumper and the wall. Squash-o-rama.

"Okay," I managed, panting. "This is . . . not good."

My finger was still on the trigger of my Taser, and the arc of current popped and spat. It took an effort to unclench my hand and let the trigger go. That's when it hit me. Oh, my God, I was in so much trouble. Just in front of my car, too close for the headlights, there was a mangled bad guy I had just turned into gazpacho. Just next to me was my pit bull, jaws dripping gore. They would put him down for attacking a person. I'd be trapped in an interrogation room with Sheriff Lamb explaining-

Gazpacho né Creepy twitched and started to move with purpose.

"Veronica," Lucy whispered.

I stared at the twitching thing. I used to be a big fan of zombie movies. The gore and scare factor never bothered me. Not anymore. Nope.

"Veronica," Lucy repeated, urgently.

Did I get out and look? Did I take off? Front porch lights were starting to come on. Chances of someone getting a close look at my car and the license plate were rising fast.

"VERONICA!" Lucy screamed.

That snapped me out just as a single hand came through the passenger window again, grabbing at Lucy. Backup lunged at it. I dropped the car into reverse, turned the wheel, and hit the gas, pulling us into a tight turn, and tearing Lucy out of the attacker's grip and the attacker's arm out of Backup's jaws - minus, I'm guessing, some serious skin and flesh. But with, to my surprise, Lucy's geometry compass. She'd stabbed the guy through the forearm with it.

Tires squealed, and the headlights swung across the intersection and lit up our third surprise guest, the one I'd tased. He was on his feet, which he really wasn't supposed to be able to do after the volts I'd put into him. Now, see, the thing is, I have a pretty good eye for detail. You have to in order to be a detective. And I usually have a clue as to who's attacking me. Leather jackets, chains, and motorcycles? That's your standard PCH biker gang get up. Blond hair, wife beater, tattoos, and cigarette lighter, you're looking at one of the Fitzpatrick boys. Smoky the Bear uniform with a star-shaped badge? Sheriff's department. Context helps a lot, too. Who have I pissed off recently? Am I working a case, and has the target of my investigation picked up that I'm tailing him? That sort of thing.

Tattered black robes, bald head, runes where his eyes should have been? Not so much.

Lucy gasped beside me, which was actually kind of a relief, because it meant I wasn't hallucinating. Wait, did I say 'relief'? No, not relief . . . what's the word? Horrified realization. Believe me, a hallucination would have been so much better.

"It's them," she cried. "Veronica, they'll kill me. Go! Just go!"

Don't argue with the client, especially when she's paid up front. I peeled out again, and when the last guy ran straight at us, I didn't flinch but swerved to clip him. The front corner hit him and rolled him like a cheap taco. We went out the exit, barely clearing the security gate, and I pulled onto the side street and accelerated into Neptune's evening traffic.

_

There are screams, and then there are screams. If it had been a couple of preteen girls screaming at the top of their lungs, Dani would have noted it with annoyance and then ignored it. This was children screaming in terror. Both she and her mom looked up. Dani pegged it as coming from the Reyes house, two doors down. Where Arizay had just dragged her two cousins.

"Mami, get in the house, lock the door, and call 911," she ordered.

She didn't check that her mother would do as she told. Jack Reese's wife would never disobey a direct order from a police officer. Instead, she put her hand on her holster, and ran for whatever the commotion was.

The Reyes household was having some sort of family celebration - a birthday or an anniversary - and there were plenty of cars parked around the house, making it hell to clear her path before she made it to the sidewalk which went around the side of the house to the backyard. The screams - now pain as well as fear - escalated, and they came with the clatter of objects thrown and knocked over. The men were yelling too, which was a very, very bad sign. She pulled her sidearm, wishing Crews was with her. He might have more than a couple of screws loose in that eclectic collection of zen proverbs he called a brain, but he was a solid cop who had never once hesitated in backing her up.

Keeping the barrel of her gun down, she came round the first corner just in time to be nearly run down by a woman pushing two terrified children. She froze, and the children whimpered. Reese grabbed her by the shoulder with her off hand and pushed her to the side and then behind her.

"Get to my mom's and tell her I sent you," she ordered.

They started running again.

She crept closer and came into view of the backyard. Like most of the backyards belonging to working class LA residents, this one had been paved over years back to avoid upkeep on a lawn. There were a couple of raised flower beds, a coiled garden hose, some plastic toys, and barbecue supplies.

Then a man landed a few feet in front of her, clearly thrown from several yard. His belly was bright red with blood, like he'd been stabbed. Dani went towards him, but he saw her and shook his head emphatically, gesturing in the direction from which he'd been thrown. She'd only gone a step or two and was still behind cover from that direction. When she reached the corner of the house, she came 'round, gun up, but her finger off the trigger.

She'd expected a family fight, or maybe even some sort of turf war between rival gangs which had spilled over into family space. What she saw made no sort of sense at all, and at that point, her training kicked in.

The suspect was up against the fence, hemmed in by multiple men and young women brandishing chairs, barbecue forks, tiki torches, and anything else even vaguely weapon-like which came to hand. Several more people lay on the ground, moving or not, some of them deliberately lying over children, others injured and trying to get out of the way. But the one person the suspect was constantly trying to reach was the teenage girl backed up against a hot grill, Arizay. And the suspect? White male, 30 to 45 years of age, bald, wearing tattered black clothing, eyes were . . .

He hissed at her, and she realized he didn't have a tongue.

"POLICE!"

It was like she hadn't said a thing. No one turned to see her. The suspect looked at her, then deliberately attacked the young man closest to her, grabbing the machete he wielded, then clawing his face. The man screamed, and Dani cleared her shot.

The four shots she fired hit the suspect in a tight group in the middle of the sternum. It wavered, then collapsed. Breathing hard, she held still, all of the large muscles in her body trying to take over and send her running in the other direction or over to the suspect to stomp his brains out of his head or . . . she took her finger off the trigger and lowered her weapon.

So much, a little voice in her head said, for getting anything done that evening. Or the next week for that matter. She could count on debriefing and interrogation for the rest of the night, and even with all the witnesses here, there was no way to make this process go any faster.

The screaming had turned to silence, which lasted just long enough for Dani to think about how much she wanted a drink. A really, really big drink that came with a blackout at the end of it. Then the voices started up, men and women in nearly gibbering panic.

"Officer," someone said. "Officer!"

She looked up into the face of an older black man, the kind you might see behind a push broom or on a garbage truck, the kind you knew you damn well better not try any nonsense with.

"Are you all right?" he asked. "Are you hurt?"

"No," she managed.

Then she came to herself. She was the only law enforcement officer on the scene of a multi-injury attack which had just ended with a police shooting.

"Don't touch anything," she ordered. "Was there anyone with him? Did he have an accomplice?"

The family members looked up at her, and the ones closest to the body moved away from it. Several of them grouped around Arizay, checking on her.

"No," the man told her. "No, he didn't have anyone with him. He didn't have any accomplices. He just came over the fence like it wasn't even there and came at my granddaughter."

That was when she noticed he was holding his shoulder, and his shirtsleeve was soaked red. She put her gun back in its holster and made sure the holster was fastened.

"You need to sit down, sir," she said, trying to lead him over to one of the few chairs still upright. "Has anyone called for paramedics?"

He nodded, allowing her to move him. "My daughter is on the phone now."

"Okay," Reese breathed. "Okay."

It was actually unusual that police were at involved in an incident when it happened. Most of the time, they got there well after it was over, if only because most acts of violence didn't take very long. If they did arrive in time, it was usually in full force with SWAT and first responders.

She took her cell phone out and dialed Crews. It rang several times before going to voicemail.

"Dammit, Crews," she muttered and listened for his outgoing voicemail.

Aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, and at least one set of parents were talking, pointing at their dead body like it was a poorly made piñata. One of them brought Arizay over. She had her hand over her mouth, but from her nodding and pointing, she knew the guy.

"Hey, you need to move away from the body," Dani ordered them.

"Don't pay them any mind," Arizay's grandfather said, taking her by the elbow. He stood up again.

"You need to sit back down, sir," she said. Crews's voicemail finally started recording. "Crews, it's Reese. I need you down here right now. I'm involved in a shooting, and-"

She saw the movement from the corner of her eye, and it was only the adrenaline already loaded into her bloodstream that made it possible for her to move fast enough. She dropped the phone and reached for her gun while shoving the old man out of the way. The second attacker dropped onto the picnic table in the middle of the yard, knocking one woman aside and going straight for Arizay. Reese got one shot off before the family members were in her line of fire again. She hit the attacker just under the arm, but from the angle, it was a shallow wound, probably exiting through the shoulder blade and not crossing the lung at all. It would hurt, but it wouldn't kill.

Arizay looked up in time, saw the man, picked up the lit barbecue grill by one of the legs with little or no effort, and swung it into him as he fell towards her. The grill took him mid-torso, and from ten yards away, Reese could hear the sizzle of skin burning against the cast impact knocked Arizay into the fence, put the attacker on the ground, the grill on top of him, and red hot coals scattered across the patio. He shoved the grill off - picking up more burns and causing the disturbing odor of burnt pork chops to spread - and got to his feet. Family members, some of them hit by burning coals were running in a panic. She couldn't get a clear shot, and then Arizay jumped - jumped a lot higher than anyone not on a track and field team had any right to jump - and kicked the man in the face. Everyone heard the crack of his jaw breaking.

He fell heavily to the ground again, and Arizay's family started yelling and shoving and pushing her.

"GO!" one woman yelled. "Baby, just go!"

"Here," the old man said, grabbing Dani by the arm and turning her toward him. "Here, take these, and you get my girl out of here."

She looked down and saw he was pushing his keys into her hand.

"You get her out of here," he repeated. "Those things, they're coming for her. My girl, she's special, you understand? She's got a destiny. But she can't fill that destiny if those things kill her."

Arizay was there, silent for once, stunned, and Dani regretted ever wondering what could shut that trash talking girl down.

Family had swarmed the downed attacker, but it fought them off and heaved back up to its feet.

"DAD!" A woman screamed from just inside the house.

The man with them stepped over, took a shotgun from her, and raised it.

"Let's go," Dani said, taking Arizay's hand and pulling her into a run.

She wanted to dump the man's keys and run for her car, but as she brought Arizay around the house to the street, she saw a silhouetted figure in tattered robes on the roof of the house next door.

"Which one is your grandfather's?" she asked.

Arizay pointed. It was a Crown Victoria Police Interceptor. The old man had bought a retired cop car. It was new enough the keyfob unlocked the doors. Dani pushed Arizay in front of her when she heard the third attacker hit the ground and start running towards them. She turned, brought the gun up, and clearing her line of fire, started pulling the trigger.

It took five shots to bring him down, and the second attacker was coming around the back of the house. Dani climbed into the driver's seat, started the car, put it in gear, and peeled out, taking the street by memory, and praying no one was stupid enough to walk out in front of her. Arizay sat in the passenger seat, bracing herself against the door and the floor as Dani took the corners at flying speed.

"Get your seatbelt on," Dani ordered. "Do you have a cellphone?"

"Uh huh."

Arizay struggled to pull the belt across herself and buckle it in.

"You know what those things were?" Dani demanded. "What the hell were they? They had Istitches/I over their eyes."

"Bringers," Arizay said, gulping. "They're called Bringers. I had a dream about them. They'll kill me, they get the chance."

Now that she'd answered the question, she found her voice again.

"Oh, IMadre de Dios/I, he hurt my little cousin, Eduardo, and my grandpa. I think he killed Chuy. They'll find me, and they'll kill me."

"Why?" Dani asked, bringing the car into heavier traffic, the better to get away from those things, and the better to lose them in the sea of people that was the Greater Los Angeles metropolis. "Why would they want to kill you?"

Aside from the obvi- she squashed the joke before it was complete.

"Because . . ." Arizay took a deep breath, "because I'm a Slayer. A potential one, and they're going to kill all of us. They've been hunting us down for weeks now. I keep having these dreams, and I knew they were getting closer, but I didn't actually see one until tonight."

"You're a what?" Dani asked.

_

"Wait a minute, you're a what?" I asked "What are you?"

"A Vampire Slayer," Lucy repeated, watching me pace back and forth across the gravel strewn ground just off the PCH.

We were about five miles from Lucy's home and the site of one super-squished guy and two of his slightly broken buddies, stopped on a pull-out on the Pacific Coast Highway. It wasn't planned. One of my tires had blown out, and when I'd gotten out to see if there was any way I could plug it, I found out that one of our Hellboy attackers had taken a bite out of the sidewall. I was half an inch from calling my dad and telling him his favorite daughter had gone round the bend and needed some me-time in a padded holding cell.

"A Vamp- ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?!"

Backup lay on the ground between us, looking back and forth. His muzzle still had bloodstains on it, though I'd cleaned him up as best I could. Sheriff Lamb would be more than happy to play a Miss Gulch with him, even if Backup was too large to fit in a wicker basket.

"Well," Lucy said carefully, "actually, I kind of thought I was. That's why I wanted to find my dad. If I have to be institutionalized, I don't want my mom as my legal guardian. In fact, I'd rather just about anyone else be but her. But, it looks like I wasn't crazy. The stuff I saw in my dreams is really real. Which . . . is kind of good, but also kind of bad."

Which brought me back to the guy I'd run down and his buddies, and the fact that they'd gone through Emo and come out on the other side in a very, very bad place. Like a "stitch runes through your eyeballs and cut out your tongue" bad place. Gotta say, an evening of that makes the usual sturm und drang of Neptune High's worst teen drama seem like a walk in a park with a bag of Goldfish crackers and a cold bottle of apple juice.

My normal sangfroid had taken a vacation to the Côte d'Azur and was refusing all telephone calls, telegrams, and requests for interviews. My spare tire was currently in service on the other side of the blowout - a major no-no for a PI with people to follow, but a glum necessity when the funds for replacing tires had been devoted to frivolities like groceries and electric bills.

"How'd they find you?" I finally managed a sensible question.

Lucy thought about it for a moment. "I don't know. I don't think they have to search for me. I think they just show up and then head straight for me."

If she was right, it meant her mom and any responding deputies back at the condos were probably safe. It also meant we were sitting ducks. It really was time for the cavalry, and cavalry meant Dad. I pulled out my phone and pulled up favorites.

"Do you know Eli Navarro?" Lucy asked. "You should call him."

I paused. It's not that Weevil, aka Eli Navarro, was not on my short list of 'people who can help when things go pear-shaped', but he came with his own list of complications like 'currently battling for control of the PCHers', 'occasionally suspected of graffiti, grand larceny, or murder', and 'may or may not want my ex-boyfriend, Logan, dead'. Also, how did he get on Lucy's list?

"Okay, maybe I just need a refresher course in reality," I said, leaning against the trunk of my car. "Could you go over the part about where Weevil is your backup?"

She blinked, like it never occurred to her that someone might not see the connection.

"His Tia Rocio was our housekeeper for a while when I was in elementary and middle school. She's a really nice lady, and sometimes Mom would pay her extra to babysit me, so she'd just haul me around with her. So, some days, I got to spend at her place, and I met Eli. He's really nice, and he told me if I ever needed any help, just to call him."

So tonight my understanding of the world had gone through two tectonic displacements. The first was that freaky-deeky demon-cult guys were after a fourteen year old girl because she was a potential Vampire Slayer. The second was that Weevil had, for no reason other than it was the right and decent thing to do (and also, Lucy had a wide-eyed Bambi gaze that could melt tiles off the space shuttle), bestowed a permanent Biker Gang Godfather token on my client.

"It's just," Lucy continued, "I think he'll understand that I need to get to Sunnydale."

Cue stylus being dragged off vinyl record sound effect.

"Sunny- Sunnydale?" I demanded. "You got some 'splainin' to do, Lucy. If there's one place on Earth we might actually find a real vampire, it's going to be Sunnydale!"

I mean, come on! Sunnydale? It's a standing joke throughout southern California. It's ripe for a 60 Minutes investigation. Law enforcement in that town makes Sheriff Lamb look like a poster boy for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. It's like Area 51 met the Bermuda Triangle and had a bouncing baby Shoggothville.

"It's where the real Slayer is," Lucy said. "Eli met her a couple of years ago. She saved his life."

"I . . . uh . . . wuh . . ."

That's right, Mars, go for the suave and sophisticated. It impresses the client every single time.

"Why the hell not?" I finally said, shrugging.

Dad was going to kill me.

_

"No, we are not just taking off into the night," Dani Reese repeated. "I was involved in a shooting. I shot a man - two, no, three men - who were trying to kill you and multiple other members of your family. We are going to the nearest manned police substation so that you are protected, and so that I can report in."

And get Crews and Tidwell in on this. A cop without her partner was a lonely, lonely soul indeed, and the fact that she'd fired ten shots from her weapon in the line of duty left her feeling as alone as the ancient mariner. There were procedures for this, and so far, she had violated . . . well, all of them. She was pretty sure with Crews and Tidwell backing her on this and Arizay providing witness testimony, she might still have a job and a badge at the end, but her place in the universe was far from certain.

"We can't," Arizay insisted, pleading, almost begging. "Dani, they will follow me wherever we go, and if you take me there, they're just going to kill a bunch of cops to get at me."

"How many more are there?" Dani asked.

"I don't know," the girl answered, wiping her face. "They don't start out that way. They were people once, and now they're just . . . they like empties that got filled with evil, okay?"

Which was disturbingly poetic for a girl like Arizay.

"Okay, but they stop when they get shot a bunch of times, right?" Dani asked. "Because that one didn't look like he was getting up. Neither did the third one."

"So what are you going to do, Officer?" Arizay demanded, tears spilling over, "put me in a cell, in a cage? You think that will keep me safe? I have to get to Sunnydale."

"What?"

Where the hell had this come from?

"You saw those things, right?" Arizay asked, wiping her eyes with embarrassment. "Those things are trying to stop me from getting to Sunnydale. It's where all the Potentials, girls like me, are trying to get to."

"What?" Dani repeated.

"My grandpa told you, din't he? I got this destiny. I have to be there. I have to do this. Maybe the whole world is counting on me and the others."

"I just . . . don't even . . ."

Maybe Crews could get some sense out of her. Arizay's logic seemed to have taken that loopy, left-handed path that his often did.

They pulled into the parking lot of one of the few substations in the area that was manned twenty-four hours a day. Dani found a spot near the entrance, parked, turned off the car, and pulled the key out of the ignition. She looked at Arizay, who was smaller and more miserable than Dani had seen her since the first time she'd wandered out of her grandparents' front yard to sass the neighbors.

"Look, Arizay, I know you got a thing with authority," she said, "and that's fine. But we are dealing with the real shit here. Crazy evil guys are trying to kill you. This is where the police actually get to be the good guys. When the trouble starts, the police run towards it, not away. All the other stuff you talked about, Slayers and Potentials and demons, that's not real. Okay? The Los Angeles Police Department is."

"Okay."

Dani did not like that the spark had gone out of Arizay's facade, but she kept it to herself. She got out, waited for the girl to do likewise, and led her into the police substation, pulling her badge from her belt.


	3. Things Get Complicated

Neptune, CA - Mars

Not to my surprise, Weezil was less than thrilled to hear from me. To my slightly startled puzzlement, it was for other than the usual reasons.

"What the hell are you doin' draggin' around a nice kid like Lucy Sinclair?" Weezil demanded. "You know what, Mars? Don't tell me. Give her her money back, walk away, and never speak to her again."

I held the phone away from my face and stared at it for a moment. My usual storage for the "things which do not compute" category was a metaphorical drawer in the shabby kitchen of my unconscious mind's abode. and I can never get it open, because that one ladle is turned the wrong way and keeps catching. Now I found myself digging through my unconscious mind's attic (why is there always a dressmaker's dummy? No one I know has ever actually held the kind of needle that could pull a thread), tossing the contents of a large box labeled 'ambiguous childhood memories', crossing out the original wording, and writing over it in red Sharpie "What is this I don't even".

"Okay, so, I'm going to want one of those ten second long synopsis of the last half of the season where you actually explain why you're getting all Mama Bear about an 09er kid, but it can wait. Right now, we're on the side of the PCH, I've got a blowout and no spare. Lucy's in serious danger, I left three guys in a slightly dismembered heap back at her condo entrance, and we've got to get to Sunnydale."

I realized my voice had risen nearly an octave and cut myself off. Dial it back, Mars. The last time you got this operatic, Aaron Echolls was trying to kill you and your dad.

There was a long pause.

"Where are you?"

"Three quarters of a mile north of the Neptune Boulevard, on the pullout just south of the lookout point," I answered.

"I'll be there in ten."

He was as good as his word, clocking in at just under nine minutes. There must have been some interesting phone calls to insurance companies that evening. Instead of his usual motorcycle, he was in car. What I know about cars can probably fit into something the size of a shoebox, but without going into mind numbing details of year, make, and model, it was land yacht of distinguished pedigree, lovingly restored to former glory by a mad scientist's lab full of interesting experimental equipment. Primo sound system and the ability to bounce its front end more than three feet in the air with hydraulics, because why the hell not?

"That's not your car," I noted as he actually used the driver side door instead of vaulting over it.

"Never said it was," he replied, coming around the end of the car.

"Eli!" Little Lucy squealed with delight.

"Hey, m'ija," he said.

He grabbed her in a big, over the shoulder bear hug, and she hugged right back. I stood off to the side, feeling superfluous. When he let her go, he held her out a bit and looked her over.

"You ain't grown any," he commented. "You need some food."

"Mom's been living off of takeout and kale smoothies for the last six months," she said, shrugging.

"Uh huh." Weevil nodded. "We got some tamales frozen from Christmas. I'll drop some off in your locker."

Her face lit up.

Weevil frowned, looking over the serious set of scratches Lucy had picked up on her scalp and just past her hairline from where Gazpacho's buddy had tried to grab her. His head snapped toward me, and I pulled back the collar of my shirt to show off the brand new seatbelt bruise I had coming up over my collarbone. Then I nodded to my car.

He looked over, caught the hole punched out of my windshield, and lost whatever humor he had left.

"How many?" he asked, taking a slow walk towards the front of the car.

"Three," I answered. "One of them isn't getting up again. The other two are on foot, but they looked like the kind that might hurry."

He examined the bumper closely, squatting close to it. When he stood, he lashed out with a foot, kicking the bumper in the same spot I'd hit Gazpacho over and over.

"What's h-" Lucy started.

I held up a hand to stop her, not wanting to throw Weevil off his groove. When he was satisfied with the damage, he got up, went to the trunk of his car, and opened it with a single key on a fob.

"You understand," he said, reaching into the cavernous trunk, "I did not plan this out. I happened to be picking up groceries when I got your call."

He pulled out a bottle of bleach, went back to my car, and poured it straight over bumper, then the windshield, and then the passenger window and frame. That's when I got a little scared. Bleach destroys DNA, voids luminol results, and washes off gunpowder residue. He wasn't just taking this seriously. He was treating it as if it were one of his own gang members.

He put the bleach back in the trunk of the car and pulled out a bag and filled it with some other things.

"Watch the seats and the floormats when you get in," he said, going back to his car's driver side. "Every scratch comes out of my hide."

He handed me a beach towel for Backup to lie on.

"You and Bowser ride in the back, Mars," he said. "Loose, you're shotgun."

"Can we stop somewhere?" Lucy asked. "I'm kind of hungry."

"Get used to it," Weevil answered. "We'll stop at my abuela's house in LA and do some figuring before we head to Sunnydale. No pitstops."

"But, Weevil," I said, "what if I'm experiencing . . . feminine issues?"

Lucy's head poked up over the shoulder of the front seat. "Are you? I always have backup supplies, just in case."

"Really?" I asked, putting on my best gratified and amazed face. "Do you like pads or tampons better?"

"Oh, I rea-"

"NO!" Weevil yelled, wild-eyed. "Hell, no. Under no circumstances are the women in this car going to run their mouths about any time of the month, let alone that one. I swear to God, Mars, you get her started on that topic, and I will strip you, put a bone through your nose, and leave you in a grass hut on a pile of straw so you can live like the rest of the prehistoric savages."

He started the car.

"Actually, that's more Biblical than paleolithic," I said.

"Was that every month or just for menarche?" Lucy asked, curious.

"Madre de Dios." Weevil pointed a stern finger at me. "Make her stop, Mars, or I will leave both of you on the side of the road."

I cleared my throat. "Hey, Sinclair, you should probably hold off on the whole shooting fish in a barrel thing for a while longer."

"I thought we were talking about menstruation," she said, looking confused.

Weevil pulled into northbound traffic, grinding his teeth the whole way.

_

Los Angeles, CA - Reese

Detective Dani Reese stood next to the door into the waiting room where Arizay napped, leaning against the window which looked into the room. The teenage girl, for all her bravado, had been shattered with shock and exhaustion. Dani gave her the coat she'd been wearing, folded up. Arizay had half-muttered a thank you, put her head down, and gone out like a light.

Now she stood outside of the room her charge slept in, trying to figure out what was going to happen next. Her partner stood next to her, munching on . . . she glanced over and up at him. Some sort of dried fruit. Figs? Dates?

"I don't like it," she said, turning her eyes back to the officers staffing the substation.

"Did you know that some scholars think the fig was actually the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," he said. "I guess apples were too boring."

"What?" She looked back at him. "Crews, have you heard a word I said? I shot three different suspects this evening. I killed two of them. That kid in there is talking Saturday matinee horror stuff, there's been no update on her family, and not one officer in this place has taken a statement from me. I have no idea what's going on."

"I heard you," Crews said, regarding his shrivelled fruit. "You know what's going on. You just don't want to face up to it. Not yet. Start paying attention to what's in front of you, Reese. It's the only way you're going to keep the kid alive."

She woke with a start.

She'd nodded off sitting in the broken down chair of the old living room set crowding the family waiting room. Arizay was still sleeping on the couch. It was late evening and much too early for a staffed substation to be so empty. Wary, she got up, checking that her gun was still in its holster. She'd expected a delay of a few minutes before the captain came out, collected her and her gun, notified her union rep and the IAB, called Crews and her captain, and then stuck her in a room. She wasn't sure how long she'd been asleep, but it was much longer than that.

The station was quiet. There should have been officers walking back and forth. There should have been people in and out of the front door and at the counter. There should have been a congenial but slightly harassed desk sergeant at the counter, dealing with the people. Some of the lights were off. Somewhere outside her line of sight, people were moving back and forth, but it wasn't the purposeful stride of someone working.

All of the office greenery- and there was a lot of it - was dead.

Around a corner, behind a rank of filing cabinets, and through another window, this one reinforced with steel wire, she could see a member of the staff moving. A lot of cops shaved their head, she told herself. She half-wished Tidwell would shave his so he wouldn't look like a perpetual greaseball. But the cops who did shave their heads all had one trait in common: they were male. The female officer who moved back and forth in the little room almost out of Reese's sight was bald, and her eyes were closed and sunken.

There was a shuffle of feet, and Dani looked over at the door back into processing, on the other side of the main area behind the counter. Two men, both bald. They moved like they were sleepwalking, but that didn't make her feel any better. Their jackets looked like they'd been through a shredder. Their mouths were wrong, and so, she realized, were their eyes.

She stepped back into the waiting room, moving very smoothly and as silently as she could. Then she crouched down beside Arizay, put an arm across her shoulders so she wouldn't bolt upright, and then put her other hand over the girl's mouth and clamped down. Arizay woke instantly, eyes wide. She grabbed at Reese's shirt and hair, her nails breaking the skin in a couple of spots, and when she realized who it was, she relaxed.

"We're leaving," Dani said in a soft voice.

Arizay nodded without making a sound and handed Reese her coat. Smart girl. Dani led her out of the room, keeping to a low crouch, and around to the swinging half-door that marked the start of non-public space at the end of the counter. There were two Bringers, waiting for them. How those things could see, she would never figure out, but they could see, and they did. Both of them spotted Dani and Arizay, and came toward them.

It wasn't a rush, but it was a purposeful stride. Reese grabbed the rotating stock shelf of brochures and pamphlets and pulled it down across the entryway and pushed Arizay back. The next exit would be straight back, out to the police vehicle lot. Arizay grabbed a baseball bat from behind one of the desks. Movement off to the sides coalesced into five new Bringers for a total of seven. They were closing in on the two women.

"Arizay, I know some of them," Dani hissed. "What's changing them?"

Arizay had gone pale and wide-eyed. "It's got something nearby that pulls on everything around it. Plants die, people go crazy or they just leave."

"It?" Dani demanded, trying to keep an eye on all the different movement around them. It was impossible. "What is 'it'?"

"Evil," Arizay answered. "Just . . . evil. The First Evil. It's always been outside. Outside people. Outside the world. Outside life. Now it's trying to get in. I dreamt about it."

They were in the short hallway that went past interview rooms and offices to the back area which branched off into a break room on one side and a weapons locker on the other. There were four more Bringers in there. They were surrounded.

"Still think it's just one bad apple?" Arizay asked, a ghost of a laugh in her voice.

"I'm willing to consider that there may be an endemic problem with the culture at this specific location, and that a change in leadership is appropriate," Dani managed.

Crews would have laughed. Arizay just stared at her.

She pulled her gun out of her holster and looked over at the racks of weapons twenty-five feet away. They might as well have been on the moon. She had seven shots left in her magazine, and if she had enough time to get her backup magazine in, she'd have seventeen more. It wasn't going to work. She started looking for a way to get Arizay out of there on her own.

The Bringer closest to them pulled out a long, ornate dagger, dragging the edge along the scabbard so it made a terrible rasping sound as it came free.

"Yeah, pendejo," Arizay growled, "you bring a knife to a fight with me, you see where it gets you."

There was movement on the other side of the back windows, looking onto the lot where the police vehicles were kept, but it was too dark to see what it might be. More Bringers?

"Ari," Dani said with a calm she didn't feel. "I start shooting, I want you to grab that chair and send it through the back window, okay? As soon as it's clear and you won't cut yourself to pieces, I want you out through there, you understand?"

"You're coming with me, right?" Arizay demanded.

"I'll be right behind you." she agreed. "Just run for the hills and don't look back, okay?"

Arizay nodded.

The other Bringers started pulling out knives. Some of them were the same ornate ritual blade the first Bringer had, but most were a collection of Bowie knives, hunting knives, and kitchen knives. She took a deep breath, bracing herself. No question about it, this was going to suck.

She was in the motion of bringing her gun up to fire at the closest Bringer when something came through the far window, breaking it. Dani caught the object's bounce out of the corner of her eye, grabbed Arizay, threw her to the ground, and then threw herself on top.

"DOWN! STAY DOW-"

The flashbang went off, annihilating the world with screaming white. Arizay tried to get up, but Dani shoved her back down, feeling the thudding impact of feet landing through the floor and wall, and sensing more than hearing the gunshots that followed. A lot of gunshots. Then, in the midst of chaos, a bubble of calm descended upon them.

_

Los Angeles, CA - Mars

"So, why the big brother act?"

After a non-negotiable pitstop - just call me baby bladder - little Lucy had asked if she could sit in the backseat with Backup and an assortment of heavy melee weapons - baseball bat, five iron, tire iron, crowbar, and a couple of other things. That left me riding shotgun with Weevil. He scowled at me.

"No, I'm serious." I persisted.

"She's family," he said in a tone which suggested I drop it.

I am, however, constitutionally incapable of dropping things.

"Oh? Did her mom have a wild motorcycle gang period about fifteen and a half years ago?"

He raised his lip in a snarl, but his heart wasn't really in it.

"No. Her mom's a complete flake," he answered. "Loose has totally got that child of an alcoholic thing down pat. Takes care of anything and everything that holds still long enough and thinks she's to blame for everything from a stain on her mom's blouse to continental drift. Worried. Constantly worried. Most worried little kid I ever saw when my Tia Rocio started bringing her with during the summer. Tia sends her out to play with us, and my sisters kind of take her over, and she starts relaxing, right?"

"Yeah, so, what happened?"

Weevil shrugged, keeping his eyes on the road, taking turns one after the other with rote familiarity. "Lot of stuff happened. She starts teaching my grandmother how to read, for one thing, by asking her help with 'homework'. None of the rest of us could do it. Abuela's too proud, you know? Then, one day, my brother, Nacio, he starts choking on something. No one knows what to do. Little Loose over there, picks him up-"

"Picked him up?" I interrupted. Nacio Navarro was the tallest and scariest member of the Navarro family. He was probably twice Lucy's weight.

"He was fourteen at the time," Weevil pointed out, "but she was eight, so it was still pretty wild. She got up on a stool, got her arms around him, picked him up, and bounced him. Bounced the burrito right out of him."

"You know there's actual medical terminology to be used here," I said.

"Yeah, I heard that," he agreed. "In my family, we like to call it 'Lucy's got a home with us forever, no questions asked.'."

He took us into a quiet residential neighborhood, not far from the Los Angeles river. It was all stucco houses with little yards. Most of them had converted their garages to third or fourth bedrooms years ago, and the driveways were all filled with cars - everything from beaters to the latest SUV. It was a mixed neighborhood, both in age and ethnicity, and there were way, way too many cars parked along the street in front of one of the homes. Several of them were police cars.

"What the hell?" Weevil muttered, peering over the windshield at the hubbub.

I looked as well, and from my vantage point, I could see something in the street, about forty yards down, draped in a white sheet, and surrounded in police tape.

"Oh, this is not good," he said.

He put the car in park and cut the lights.

"V, get behind the wheel," he ordered. "Be ready to move. I'm going to find out what's going down."

The slam of the door woke Lucy, who lifted a tousled head.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Something's going on at his grandmother's," I said. "Cops are here. He's checking it out, and we're sitting tight.'

From the rearview mirror, I could see her eyes widen and look all around while she kept still.

"I don't think . . . Veronica, can we leave?" she asked in a small voice. "It's not safe here."

My first reaction was to tell her to calm down and that we'd wait for Weevil to get back. Then I told my first reaction to shut up. Lucy wasn't the type to abandon someone just because she was nervous. Backup sat up and woofed. Bad news.

I had my eyes on Weevil, who'd reached the police tape and was looking around for someone to talk to. Just as he turned back towards us and started yelling, they dropped out of the trees, knives in hand. I fired the Taser at one, dropping him for a few seconds. One of them raced up onto the hood, planted a foot on the top of the windshield and reached for me, knife held high, only to take a four foot crowbar right across his head. He dropped, and when I peeled into reverse, fell off the hood like a sack of dog food.

"Go! Just go!" Weevil yelled, waving his arms.

Lucy fell forward onto the front seat, overbalanced by her turn at bat. I pulled the fastest three point turn of my life, and gunned it.

"Where'd he go?" I demanded.

"Who?" Lucy asked, getting back onto the seat.

Backup bounded from one side of the backseat to the other, growling and woofing like I'd hidden his bunny toy someplace he couldn't get to it. I got us back onto the main artery for the neighborhood, but from there, what? Go back for Eli? I didn't know LA, and two gringas driving a competition quality low-rider were going to draw a lot of attention. None of it good.

"The third one!"

"There's a third one?" Lucy did aghast really well.

"Yeah, there was a third one," I repeated. "Did you see where he went?"

Instead of answering, she reached across me, pointing. "TURN THERE!"

I cut across traffic to make the turn and left a trail of hurt feelings and extended middle fingers. It was an industrial park, and before I could ask her where the hell that had come from, she pointed again, thankfully not screaming in my ear.

"There, turn there."

"Sit down and put your seatbelt on," I told her, taking the turn she indicated.

What I didn't do was ask her what was going on. Every single one of her nerves was firing Eureka! at the top of her lungs, and after the past several hours, I just wasn't up for arguing anymore. We went through a small industrial park and came out at another main artery. Lucy looked around, unsure, and the car gave a little hitch. Hydraulics acting up? That's all we needed.

"There," she said, pointing, aquiver with purpose.

Down the street, across a divided intersection, on the opposite side, there was a police substation.

"Uh, Lucy, I really don't think we want to involve the authorities on this one."

I mean, the LAPD couldn't be as bad as Sheriff Lamb, but they were still the joke that ended with bloodied and beat up grizzly bear yelling "I'm a rabbit! I'm a fucking rabbit!"

"It's not about the police," Lucy said. "There's something really important there. We have to go there."

I heaved a sigh, changed lanes, and pulled into the left hand turn lane at the light.

_

Los Angeles, CA - Reese

"Okay, ladies, hold still, and don't kill the nice guy."

Dani turned toward the voice, still blinded and nearly deaf, and a set of fingers touched her forehead.

"Shalaka doola mitcha kaboola," the man said.

A wave of cold passed over her and washed the blindness and deafness away, taking with it some of the tiredness and ache of anxiety she'd suffered the last few hours. She blinked, and the blur in front of her focused into a man wearing a mix of military fatigues and Native American garb. Not the Chumash and Tongva she was familiar with, but something that tickled her brain from long ago elementary school days and Thanksgiving art projects. Iroquois? Mohican?

"Up we go," he said, giving her a hand into a sitting position. "You've got twenty seconds before we run."

Then he reached down and touched Arizay's brow, closed his eyes, and exhaled. Arizay's face went from clenched to relaxed, and she looked up. The man pulled his hand back and shook it, like he'd touched a hot stove.

"Ai yi yi, pobrecita," he said. "Aren't you just the daily special? Ten seconds, ladies, be ready to scoot."

There was a melee all around, special ops soldiers in hand to hand combat with Bringers, and the Bringers were losing. One woman wielded a polearm with a long curved blade at the end, carving through Bringers like they were styrofoam. Two men, one white and one black, were tag teaming with guns and sword, cutting down Bringers like so much wheat on harvest day. She could hear battle in the other rooms and down the corridor.

"Up-si-daisy," the shuman said, taking them by an arm apiece and hauling them to their feet.

Dani, rattled as she was, stayed in a crouch and pulled Arizay back into one. Their rescuer, the only one not wielding a weapon put an arm around each, and yelled.

"Ready, boss!"

One of the men further up yelled in response. "All right, people, form up!"

And the group around them immediately changed into a modified flying wedge, moving Dani and Arizay under their guard's wings towards the front of the building, and cutting down anything that got between them and the door. The guy with the sword took a set of claws across his shoulder, and his partner countered with three bullets to the Bringer's face, leaving behind a stump and a lot of mess. Another woman, not the one with the polearm but the one with a heavy crossbow, shot another Bringer point blank in the eye and then kicked it in the chest to knock it out of the way. One very large man with curly brown hair pulled back in a pigtail, grabbed one Bringer by the head, bent it over, and snapped its neck, like he was opening a stubborn jar.

It was the most concentrated, professional, and deadly amount of violence Reese had ever seen in one place. Then, they were out of the building, into the parking lot, and their guide was pulling them with him.

"Come on, ladies, got a minimum safe distance to reach before the fireworks," he said.

The street in front of the police station was a divided road, and the median had a nice assortment of boulders and landscaping. The sachem pushed them down behind one just as a vintage Buick convertible came around the corner.

The police substation erupted into a blinding, deafening explosion - heat and flame climbed skyward, and bits and pieces of what had once been a respectable outlet of local law enforcement rained down on them.

"My grandpa's car," Arizay moaned. "He's going to be so pissed."

"Well, you can tell him it made the ultimate sacrifice," the shuman answered. "Okay, kids, on your feet. Your ride's here."

_

Los Angeles - Mars

I think it says something about my day that when the police station blew up real good, my reaction was more of a 'huh, now there's something you don't see every day' than your standard, appropriate panic and horror.

I slammed on the brakes in reaction before I even knew what was going on, and Lucy ducked below the level of the door. Even set as far back as the police station was, even with the explosion going almost totally vertical, the heat of it baked my face and made Backup lick his nose with worry. I reached over and gave him several pats to calm him down.

While fragments of Law and Order were still raining down on us, the car lurched again, and Señor Tercero showed up, clawing his way over the grill, onto the hood, and over the windshield, grabbed Lucy by an arm, and before I or Backup could anything, stood, knife in hand, to put an end to her.

Except, in time with three very loud gunshots, gouts of blood and bone erupted from his face and chest, and then he slowly fell over. Lucy fell back against me, her arm angled funny, and when the gunsmoke cleared, we were directly across from the lady with the gun who'd just saved us. Me and my junior detective skills picked up on several things:

pissed off  
tired  
hard ass  
oh, and she was maybe an inch taller than me

"Sweet," the girl with her said, smiling.

"I . . . really . . . hate . . . those guys," the woman said.

"Well, okay," the nearest man said, scratching his chin. "Good hook, time for some exposition, and looks like the kid needs some first aid."

Several other, much taller, folk collected nearby. Leader man kept an eye on us while he checked with his team. The guy with the blanket shepherded his two peeps over to us.

"Hi, there," he said. "I'm John Brant. I do stuff. Girl with crazy lip liner is a Potential - Vampire Slayer, that is. Not sure about the other. I think she's along for the ride."

"Arizay Reyes," the girl added. "What are you doing with my Tio Sergio's ride?"

"Weevil borrowed it," I said. "And then he got stuck at his aunt's, so we're kind of on our own."

"Ooh, I wouldn't want to be in his skin when this is done." Arizay shook her head. "Tio Sergio's all kinds of crazy about his baby."

I put the car in park but left the motor running. John Brant hopped over the door into the backseat, made a kissy noise at Backup, and bent over Lucy, who was in quiet agony over her arm.

"Who are you?" the lady and I asked simultaneously.

"Oh, well, my buddies-" and he indicated the loose crowd of really well, if strangely, equipped special ops wet dream guys across the way, "and I were a crack commando unit sent to prison by a military court for a crime we didn't commit. We escaped from a maximum-security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. We're still wanted by the government, and we make our living as soldiers of fortune. Normally, I'd do the whole 'if you have a problem,' but we've already established that you do."

I met the other lady's eyes.

"That's the A-Team," she said, sighing. "Frickin' bad as Crews, just in a different direction."

He smiled at me and winked. "We're an NGO that specializes in putting down outbreaks of bad guys like Bringers. We're kind of busy right now, but we help where we can."

He looked over Lucy's arm, gently taking it in one and putting another on her shoulder.

"All right, sweetheart. Your shoulder's dislocated. I'm going to fix it."

"Uh huh."

"So, take a deep break and let it out, and then-"

He looked up and went wide-eyed.

"Hey, is that Cary Grant?"

"What?" Lucy looked up and over. "UHHHHHHGH."

He gave her arm a practiced yank while folding her in the other direction, and we all heard the click of the joint popping back into place.

"Nope, sorry, wasn't him," he said. "Now, let's get your arm into a sling."

"That's not fair," Lucy whimpered.

"Besides," I said, "Cary Grant's been dead for about twenty-five years."

Lucy burst into tears. I leaned my head down on the steering wheel. The nice, cold, non-judgemental steering wheel.

"Sheesh," Arizay said. "I guess we're out past Princess Crybaby's bedtime."

"Ari," the older lady said, "stuff it, or I'll give you something to cry about, okay?"

Ari glared at her but subsided.

"Detective Dani Reese," the woman introduced herself. "LAPD."

I almost asked her about the station and if it was hers and decided wisely not to. Points for Mars. Only down by a couple zillion at this point.

"Veronica Mars," I answered. "Junior at Neptune High."

Something flickered across Detective Reese's expression. Oh, so she'd heard of Neptune, and if she'd been a LEO long enough, she might even recognize my dad's name.

"Yeah, okay, so going to Sunnydale?" Reese asked.

"That's what the brochure said," I replied. "Starting to wonder about the advertised extras, though."

"Uh huh."

She nodded and looked around, taking a measure of the neighborhood. Off in the distance, the wail of sirens had started up. What, five minutes? A little more?

"Okay, Brant, put Lucy in the backseat. Ari, you're riding in back as well," Reese said.

Ari started to object but stopped when Reese glared at her. Wow, that was a good must have spent years perfecting that glare. Maybe I could get some pointers.

"Mars, scoot over," she told me. "I'm driving."

"I drive fine," I protested.

"Do you have federal certification in tactical driving skills?" she asked.

" . . . no."

"Then slide over," she repeated. "I'm driving."

John Brant helped Lucy over the back of the front seat and into the backseat. He got out, and Arizay got in. I scooted over, and Detective Reese took the wheel.

And off we went, like a herd of turtles.

_

"Hentzau, what are our numbers?" Agent Finn asked, turning to his lieutenant.

"Gehring and I found approximately half the original staff in the weapons locker," the man replied. "It looks like the ones who turned to the First Evil killed all the others. There were also two more bodies - girls no older than sixteen. They were . . . badly used."

Riley grimaced. "That's why they took the police station. Probably suckered more than that in with the promise of safety. Well, we managed to put a stop to it. Okay, troops, pack it in. We are out of here in two minutes."

Brant rejoined them just as their civilians' car left.

"Two Potentials and a couple of ladies with mother hen complexes on their way," he said.

"You doing okay?" Riley asked.

"Eh, three minor healing spells aren't so bad, but throwing a major invocation for Serendipity does take it out of a guy. Still, the Slayer mojo doesn't hurt. Lot of opportunity to shuffle some random, helpful images into their dreams."

Finn considered it. "Okay, next down time, see if you can push warning about the choke points out to them. Los Angeles is clear now, but we've got five other spots where the Bringers are ambushing Potentials on their way to Sunnydale."

He saw Hentzau study the direction the car had gone. Hentzau frowned in thought.

"Come on, lieutenant," Finn ordered.

Hentzau picked up his gear and followed.


	4. Updates Are Appreciated

Santa Monica - Mars

"We should take the 101," I told Reese over the bright yellow, banana shaped plastic table indicative of the fine dining experience which can only be had at your local Banana Burger franchise.

Reese shook her head without looking up from the phone. "Nope. There are three accidents between here and Sunnydale on the 101, and the details on one of them sound a lot like our bad guys."

Our current score stood at Reese - 5; Mars - 0. I would like it noted in the record that I was not taking it personally. If it had been Sheriff Lamb, I would have busied myself constructing one hellacious hotfoot out of a pack of matches and his shoe, but Detective Reese was a different story. Different story, different sitcom, different bat station, folks.

So far, I had lost the following arguments: who got to drive, whether we stopped anywhere for anything, whether we went through the drive through, whether we would stay to eat our food, and which highway we would take to Sunnydale. Reese, who had borrowed Lucy's cellphone the moment we sat down and had been downloading apps, signing into things, and checking every quantum of information to be found in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area, had flat out overruled me with a no followed by a one sentence explanation. And the kicker was, I couldn't actually argue with anything she said.

Detective Reese was trained by the Fibbers on how to drive combat-style. Detective Reese said, and I quote, "never miss a chance to eat, sleep, or pi-pee." Detective Reese took one look at the drive through, pointed out the deficiencies in tactical cover, and said that everyone would be taking a pi- pee-break, so we might as well order at the counter. Also, Detective Reese decreed no food in the car after she took one look at the cherry interior.

She could never be allowed to meet my dad, because I'm pretty sure my dad would adopt her on the spot, give her my room, and say "Veronica Shmeronica" when asked about the existence of his original daughter.

Not jealous. No-sirree-Bob. Not jealous at all.

"It's going to rain," Lucy said, craning her neck to look over her shoulder at the clouds coming in from the ocean.

"Not in the forecast," Reese answered.

"We should put the roof up on the car," Arizay told her.

She didn't even look up.

"No, Ari. The roof provides no protection and severely limits our visibility. There are blankets in the back. You can wrap up. Mars, what do you know about these guys?"

See why I couldn't hate her? Lucy and Arizay were Lucy and Ari, whereas I was Mars, an adult.

"About what you know," I answered. "They stand out in the crowd due to their post-Apocalyptic wardrobe, lack of eyeballs, and tendency to attack tender young girls. They're insanely fast, strong, and evil, and yet, they can be taken down with a lightly applied automobile from our country's greatest era."

That got me a definite look from a pair of eyes raised from the cellphone screen.

"Only the greatest era if you've got no problem with racism, sexism, screaming homophobia, endemic corruption of city politics, and a police force that made more money off bribes than a medieval priest selling indulgences."

Oh, my god, I think I was starting to crush on her.

Arizay, Reese's pet Slayer, was busy eating. She'd already cleared her way through one Banana Burger Bonus Combo - big burger, large side of plantain fries, and extra large chocolate banana shake. She had just started into her second while I idly pushed my fries into a pool of aioli sauce. Now, Ari, she made sense as a 'vampire slayer'. She was five eight, maybe five nine and built like a corn fed Greek statue. Logan's descriptive phrase, which he never used if he thought I was in earshot, was 'both plush and buoyant', followed by some eyebrow waggling. Yes, I am so over him. Shut up.

Next to her, Lucy looked puny and underfed.

"Lucy," Reese said.

Lucy looked back at her, wide jade green eyes behind glasses and bangs straight as a ruler across her forehead.

"What happens when you get to Sunnydale?" Reese asked.

Well, this I wanted to know too.

"I guess we need to find the real Vampire Slayer," Lucy said thoughtfully. "Only, I don't know what her name is. Betty? Bunny?"

"Buffy," Ari said.

"Buffy?" Lucy asked. "I don't know. That sounds kind of . . . fluffy."

"Because Lucy is a hard ass name?" Ari asked, scornful.

Oh, goodie. We were going to fast forward to angsty girl teen drama. Arizay had been frowning at Lucy the whole ride through Los Angeles, and Lucy had been studiously ignoring her. Most of that, I wrote off to her shoulder hurting and the whole 'seeing people get killed and buildings explode'. Sure, the people being killed were evil, but if it was your first time at the rodeo, that didn't help too much. But it seemed like Ari had her own dose of horribility to deal with, and it was spilling over.

Lucy looked up at her, disconcerted and a little hurt.

"Ari, cut it out," Reese snapped.

"Oh, sure, officer," Arizay said in an obnoxious sing-song I'm-With-Estupido voice. "Right away, officer."

"Hey," Lucy protested, turning towards Ari. "What's your problem anyway? Why are you so mean?"

And Lucy walks up to the plate, taps her bat against her cleats, and squares off to take a swing during the first annual Tone Deaf Social Skills Olympiad.

"I'm mean?" Arizay demanded. "I'm mean? I got at least one cousin dead, another who's going to be in the hospital, my dad and my grandpa got hurt trying to protect me from those diablos sin ojos, and I get stuck with Team White Girl to get where I need to go? Sorry I don't feel like sucking the dicks of the One Percent tonight."

And just like that, I got my fuse lit too.

"Hey, chola," I threw back, championing my client and all the other Have-Nots I saw on a daily basis, because I am Lollipop, the world's biggest sucker. "You can sit back and enjoy the ride, or we will leave your skank ass on the side of the road where you can practice your budding entrepreneurial skills. What you are not going to do-"

Reese pulled out her badge and slapped it on the table. Then she pulled her sidearm and slapped it down as well. I jumped.

"Do I have your attention?" she asked. "Good, because shut up. Arizay, shut up. Veronica, shut up. Lucy, shut up."

Demoted to girlhood, I glared at her along with Arizay and Lucy.

"There is one category of bad guy here," Reese told us. "And it's the bald guys trying to kill you. The people sitting at this table are the ones trying not to get killed, and if you even think of turning this into some cultural-socio-economic insult slam, I will stuff the three of you in the trunk of that fine car and drown your screams out by turning up the radio as loud as it will go."

Points. She had them. Dammit.

"From here on out, everyone is on their best manners. You will use your words, including please and thank you, and if you cannot say anything nice, then you will shut the hell up. Because if you don't, Arizay, I will call my mom, and I'll have her walk the phone over to your Abuelita's, and I'll have a little chat with that nice lady, and then I'll put you on the phone with her. Capiche?"

Arizay shut up and put her eyes on the table.

"I said, 'capiche?'" Reese repeated.

"Yeah, okay," Arizay exhaled.

"Excuse me?" Reese demanded.

Arizay grimaced. "Yes, ma'am. I understand."

Okay, I snickered. I got the feeling that Arizay's array of pegs had been inserted in the top row and never, ever moved before.

"And you, Mars," Reese speared me with a look of long experience, "do not think for a moment that I cannot get hold of your father, the former sheriff of Balboa County, Keith Mars, from whom I took not one, not two, but three workshops on techniques in criminal investigations, and give him a full report on whatever the hell his daughter has been doing in the last six hours, because one thing I am sure of is that you did not tell him you were taking a fourteen year old girl on a road trip while several unidentified but violent subjects were trying to kill her."

Schadenfreude exits stage right. Horrified shock enters.

"You know my dad?" Even to my own ears, my voice sounded squeaky.

"Well enough that he's a contact in my email, and he'll recognize my name," Reese answered. "Do we have an understanding?"

I stayed silent for a moment and ran the possibilities through my head. Reese was lying. Nope. This lady was not the bluffing type. Okay. Reese emailed my dad. Dad is always on. You have to be when you're a PI, because your clients can call at any time of the day or night. Therefore, if she chose to contact him, she'd get him. Was there any way I could fake my way past a cop telling my dad the details of the past n- nah, not even gonna go there. She had me.

I looked up and met her eyes, making myself as small and harmless as possible.

"Yes, officer."

"Lucy?" Reese turned her stare on the little redhead. "Can you handle all that?"

"Well," Little Lucy said, thinking it over. "You can't really threaten me with telling my mom, because by this time of night and with no date, she's already taken her Valium and gone to bed. She won't wake up for the phone. And I don't really have any other family."

Reese was good. Her expression didn't change one iota. No shock, no softening in sympathy, no anger on Lucy's behalf, and especially not a worry that Lucy had nullified her threat, at least on those grounds.

"But, I agree with what you say," Lucy continued. "We need to get to Sunnydale. If we fight amongst ourselves, that just gives the Bringers a better chance to kill us. We stand a better chance if we make you our leader and follow your orders. So, yeah. I can handle all that."

Now Reese cracked an expression, and it wasn't so much a smile as it was a rueful recognition of something.

"Yeah, no way I'm letting you meet my partner, kid. He'd adopt you on the spot."

"I'm okay with that," Lucy answered. "Really."

So, drama officially petered out, we started getting a little antsy. I looked down and checked on Backup, who had wolfed down the naked burger patties I'd brought him with an extra-large side of plantain fries, and laid at Lucy's feet, eyes tracking our conversation. He lifted his head and panted, thumping his tail when he saw me check him.

"Okay, finish your food, refill your drinks, and hit the bathroom for one last time," Reese told them. "We leave in five."

_

Pacific Coast Highway - Reese

Detective Reese considered the contents of the car's trunk after she removed the extra blankets.

"Your cousin a serial killer, Ari?" she asked. "I only ask because there's duct tape, a tarp, and bleach in here."

"No," Ari answered. "Eli does a lot of . . . odd jobs."

"He was buying groceries," Mars told Reese. "That's his story, and we're sticking to it."

The four of them piled into the car again, everyone full of burger, fried plantains, and shakes, including the dog. The tank had already been gassed up. They had two hours of driving in front of them.

"Mars," Reese said, settling down into the seat and making sure her hair was pulled back, "stay within five of the speed limit, and don't do anything stupid. Think you can handle that?"

"Well, technically," Mars said, starting the car and putting it in gear, "at least half my decisions today since Lucy asked me to take her on as a client have been of the stupid variety, but I'm due for a streak of smark."

"Make it work for you," Reese said. "I've got to make some calls before we lose reception."

It took fifteen minutes of driving in the early night traffic to make it to the PCH, and Mars drove like a young man with an expensive new car and no gap coverage. Reese thumbed in Crews's phone number, congratulating herself again for having memorized it instead of always counting on her contacts list. She half expected it to go to voicemail, but Crews answered it on the second ring.

"Hello? Reese? Reese, tell me it's you."

"Yeah, it's me, Crews," she answered, startled by the ferocious intensity in her partner's voice.

She heard him swear, and then the pickup was muffled while he told someone something. Then, it switched to speakerphone on Crews's end.

"Detective!" Now Tidwell had joined the fun. "Where the hell are you? No, scratch that. Get your ass back to headquarters right the fuck now."

"Captain," she said, cringing inwardly. This was going to come out of her hide professionally and personally. "I'm sorry, but I cannot do that just yet. I'm in the middle of something, and I have to see it through. I will come straight to headquarters just as soon as I'm done."

There was a long pause where she could just imagine Tidwell grabbing his head with both hands, turning, stomping, gesturing to all the uncaring gods of the universe to ask why, why a good and reliable police captain had to be saddled with a detective such as herself.

"You, just . . . you talk to her," Tidwell finally said.

He must have handed the phone back to Crews.

"So," Crews said, "wanna know where I am?"

"You're going to tell me, aren't you?" Reese asked.

"I'm standing about fifty yards away from what used to be the LA police substation number thirteen," he continued, "which is currently a ten foot deep, twenty foot wide crater filled with debris and human body parts, much of which is still on fire, and I'm here because one of the cars in the parking lot was identified as the one you shoved a fifteen year old girl into and took off in after shooting two different assailants shortly after calling me and leaving me a really, really scary voicemail that cut off with a woman screaming."

"Ay, los dias en que no quiero despertar," Reese muttered to herself.

"Are you okay?" Crews asked.

"Yeah, I'm in one piece," Reese replied. "So's the girl, if you could let her family know. Listen, Crews, I know we haven't talked much about the stuff that went down on your side. I know it's weird and complicated and all spooky. I just got handed a plateful of the same thing. I need your help, and I need you not to ask questions."

There was a pause, and at the end of it was the reward she'd earned after two years of backing Crews to the hilt in the face of treacherous captains, extreme political riptides, exasperating behavior, and walls of silence a yard thick.

"What do you need?" he asked.

"Keep Tidwell off my back and keep him from freaking out," she said. "Then I need you to look up a town north of LA called Sunnydale. I need information on a girl by the name of Buffy. Late teens, early twenties, white, shorter than average, blonde hair, green eyes, and she's almost certainly got some sort of record - criminal, psych, something."

"I will do that," Crews replied. "You staying with this number?"

"Yeah," Reese answered. "I dropped my phone back at the neighbor's house. How is everyone there?"

"Three dead guys with enough ViCAP markers that I'm pretty sure the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit collectively wet themselves and bought plane tickets out here," Crews said. "One civilian in critical condition, another in surgery for a knife wound to the abdomen, one kid admitted for a broken leg and multiple contusions and lacerations, and three others still being treated in ER, another six treated on the scene. Your mom's over here and has taken half the family members to her house to rest and sleep. Tidwell's coping, but when we got the news about the substation . . . Reese, he thought you were in there."

"Can you keep me out of this for a few more hours?" she asked. "These guys, Crews, they were on the inside, people I know, people I work with, they'd have killed me and the girl and never thought twice."

"I can keep you out until they start pulling dental records," he told her. "After that, it's up to you."

"Okay," she sighed. "Keep me posted and . . . tell Tidwell I'm sorry I freaked him out."

"I will," Crews answered. "Stay in touch."

Reese hung up, and checked the passing scenery. With a sigh, she realized that Mars had taken advantage of Reese's distraction and was only now bringing her speed down into something that wouldn't automatically get her arrested. She glanced over and saw a kind of grim joy written on Mars's face, and she knew it for what it was. If you spent days, weeks, months, even years, convinced that the world was falling apart, that the center could no longer hold, there came a point where it was a relief when it finally spun out of control, because then, you didn't have to pretend anymore. Then, you just strapped your weapons on and went to war.


	5. Why Weather Forecasts Matter

Pacific Coast Highway, south of Oxnard - Reese

Crews got back to her in just under an hour.

"Nobody names their kids normal names anymore," he stated.

"Can we skip ahead to the part I actually care about?" she asked.

"You know, Buffy is supposed to be a nickname for Elizabeth," he continued. "Not really sure how the two are connected, but it's a traditional kind of thing. You want to call your daughter Buffy, first you name her Elizabeth. I guess it's so that she has something to fall back on, if Buffy doesn't work out."

"Crews."

"And maybe that's why the person of interest you asked me about has such a colorful history." He kept going. "Maybe the name Buffy just did not fit the person she really was inside, and since she couldn't be an Elizabeth or a Lizzie or a Bess, she opted for a life of what the kids today are calling cray-cray."

"CREWS!"

He relented.

"Buffy Anne Summers, born October 24th a full 22 years ago, has a stunning record for someone who's never actually done jail time, starting off with burning down her high school's gymnasium when she was fifteen. Now, why would someone do that?"

"Are you kidding me?" Reese asked, rubbing the inside corners of her eyes, because whatever trauma her partner had endured, he had bounced back and was feeling puckish. "I don't know about you, Crews, but I had to endure high school gym, and that is clearly some proactive community service right there. Besides, it was probably filled with asbestos or something. Keep going."

"Questioned multiple times in relation to suspicious deaths - a computer teacher at her high school by the name of Jenny Calendar, a student named Kendra Young, and a city official named Allan Finch. Multiple, multiple incidents in which she is either directly implicated in or tangentially related to some frankly impressive violence, none of which actually results in an arrest or charges. Later investigated by CPS regarding her worthiness to keep custody of her younger sister after the death of their mother. Also, her high school blew up at the end of her graduation, but that was four years ago. Reese, this is one very interesting young woman, and I mean that in the original sense of the Chinese curse."

"Good," Reese said. "That's exactly what we need. Now for the love of all fresh fruit and anything else you hold sacred, do you have any way to contact her?"

"There's a street address," he answered. "1630 Revello Drive, which got me a landline on reverse lookup."

"Text that to me, please," she asked.

"All ready did," he replied.

"Thanks. How's Tidwell?"

"Well, he's been sorting a collection of baseball cards and talking to his desk," her partner told her. "Things like 'I shoulda stuck with Jasmine. Strippers got more sense.' You may need to pick up some donuts or something before you head back."

She sighed and pressed the phone to her forehead for a moment before answering.

"Yeah, okay," she managed. "Thanks. I'll update you as soon as I can."

"Stay safe."

When she got off the phone, she noticed that Mars was keeping a fairly close out-of-the-corner-of-her-eye eye on her.

"You know," Reese remarked, "when I was a kid, I couldn't wait to grow up, because I was just so sure that once I was a grown up, I would get it all figured out. Things would make sense and stop being so complicated."

Mars considered this, cocking her head to the side a bit. "Yeah, that sounds familiar. How's that working out for you?"

"I should have stuck with Saturday morning cartoons and breakfast cereal with those little marshmallows."

She dialed the phone number Crews texted her and got an answering machine.

"Hi, you've reached the Summers residence," a perky voice that could well belong to a 22-year old blonde Slayer/extremely violent delusional psychopath said. "We can't answer your call right now, so please leave a detailed message and a call back number."

She waited for the beep and took a deep breath. When the beep sounded, she started.

"Hi, my name is Dani Reese. I'm a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. I am on my way to Sunnydale with . . . I'm going to call it something potential, okay? And if you know what I'm talking about, then you probably have a clue as to what my day's been like. We're a little over an hour out. I will call you again when we are fifteen minutes out."

With a sigh, Reese turned to check on her potential Slayers.

"What are you doing?" she demanded.

The girls looked up, guilty. The contents of Lucy's purse were spread across their laps and Mars's dog, and Lucy was bending over Arizay's hand

"Nothing, officer," Arizay answered.

"I'm painting her nails," Lucy said, as if this was self-evident, which it was.

There was even a small bottle of nail polish remover and a pile of wet, flattened cotton balls marked with Ari's old color.

"You realize if we get attacked by Bringers, you . . . you're going to smear your nails," Reese said, winding down as she realized just how ridiculous her words were.

"That's a chance we'll just have to take, Detective," Lucy responded.

Reese turned back around, muttering to herself.

"Ah, teenage girls," Mars commiserated. "Can't live with them, can't sell their organs on the black market."

"I was one," Reese admitted, "and I still think we ought to be able to nail them up in a barrel and feed them through the hole. Look, next McDonalds, Starbucks, or Banana Burger you see, pull over. We'll switch out."

Then Reese took her own advice, braced her chin on her fist with her elbow resting on the door, and nodded off.

_

Just east of Sunnydale - Mars

The town of Sunnydale sits right between two bends on the Pacific coast, so instead of facing west to the ocean, the majority of the town faces south. The clouds Lucy kept watching went right overhead and piled up against the mountains to the east and north of us where they occasionally lit up from inside. Pretty, but so far away that I couldn't hear anything.

Reese had taken over the driving in Oxnard, just south of where the PCH turns inland and merges with the 101. I was appointed Ye Olde Navigator and Phone Operator for the time being. Lucy and Ari had both quieted down, and a look back at them confirmed they were both napping.

Me? It was a school night, and I had a pre-Calculus test in the morning. Unless he'd had a walk-in that demanded a first-night stakeout, Dad would be home, heating up dinner and checking the clock. It was past nine. He'd figure I was out with Wallace or Mac, but he'd call come ten o'clock, if only to get an ETA. That's if my car wasn't reported as a possible crime scene, and even if it wasn't, it was likely to be towed, leaving me without wheels. So pretty much, no matter how the rest of the night ended, I was screwed.

"Mars," Reese said, as the highway exit signs started announcing Sunnydale's existence in a few more miles, "wake the girls, and tell everyone to grab weapons."

I didn't argue. Leaving the highway meant we'd be a lot more vulnerable, and while there may have been bands of Mister Creepy hunting both Lucy and Arizay, we were pulling into Gang Creepy hometown. Sure, the Slayer lived here too, but it didn't take too much thinking to figure out that one Slayer couldn't be everywhere. If we were attacked before we made it to Buffy Summers's house, we were in deep kimchi.

I reached over the seat and poked Lucy. She woke up with a blurry, dopey expression, pushed her glasses up and rubbed her eyes.

"Is everything okay?" she asked, sitting up and pulling the blanket tighter. It had definitely gotten cool that night.

"We're coming into Sunnydale," I told her. "Pass me crowbar and wake up Ari."

Lucy, dutiful as ever, passed my weapon of choice up and nudged Ari awake. Then she paused, staring at the stormfront up against the mountains.

"Oh, it's raining," she said.

"Not here, at least," I answered.

"We should be careful," Lucy told me. "All that rain, all at once, up in the mountains, could trigger a-"

My phone - by which, I mean to say, Lucy's phone, which she had lent to Reese, who had handed it to me - rang. The number was the same one Reese had dialed, so I answered.

"Hello?"

"Is this Dani Reese?"

"Hang on," I said, and pressed the phone to my chest. "Cultured British guy on line one wants to talk to you."

"Take it," Reese answered. "Get directions to the house, don't give away anything you don't have to, and pay really close attention."

Right, because where is it written that Vampire Slayers keep spare British dudes handy? On the very possible chance that this was some sort of trap - after all, all the bad guys in Star Wars except for Vader had British accents - not only would I not give any intel that could be used against us, but I was on the lookout for any clues which might give John Bull away.

"She's driving," I told the caller. "I'm talking. Where's Buffy Summers?"

"She's, ah, occupied at the moment," British guy said. "Is this the Potential? What's your name?"

"Nope," I told him. "Holmes does not play that game, my good man. I talk to the Slayer, or phone call's over."

"Buffy Summers is out, right now, trying to make sure that there are no Bringers out on the streets," British answered, sounding peeved. "I'm Rupert Giles, her Watcher, and it's my duty to-"

"Hang on," I said, and muffled the phone again.

I got up on knee and looked over the seat.

"Either of you know anything about a 'Watcher'? Goes by the name of Rupert Giles? Sounds extremely Masterpiece Theater?" I asked.

Both of them looked dumbfounded and shook their heads.

I got back on. "Nope. Keep trying."

"Now see here, young la-"

Someone took the phone away from him. I could hear people talking, about halfway to arguing, actually. It sounded like around three people, two women and Crumpet Man. From the tones, they all knew each other and were on good terms.

"Hey, this is Dawn Summers," a new voice said. "I'm Buffy's sister."

"Hang on."

I turned back to the girls again. "Dawn Summers? Sister of the Slayer?"

They both got a distant, far away sort of look, like a neuron or two had fired in the darkness.

"Ask her about stealing her sister's cool sweater," Arizay said.

"So, giving Buffy back her sweater any time soon?" I asked.

"Hey," the girl answered. "Buffy is free to do her own laundry at any time, and if in that time she determines that she happens to be missing a sky blue angora sweater that looks way better on me than it ever did on her, then she can return my Sketchers and I'll entertain further negotiations."

Oh, yeah, I had my hands on a sister.

"We're coming in by the 101," I told her.

"Take the Calle Real exit," Dawn told me. "Stay on it, and then turn right on Treasure Road. Left on Tallant, left on Romaine, and right on Revello. We'll leave the lights on."

I gave Reese the directions and let Dawn go. I was thinking to myself that maybe, just maybe, for once, I'd get out of the can of worms I'd opened without further drama just as we exited the freeway. We came up on the stoplight at Treasure Road, and they hit us.

_

Sunnydale - Mars

I was primed and ready for trouble, and I didn't even see them coming. Backup snarled, Lucy squawked, and Arizay yelled at the top of her lungs as a bunch of them dropped down from the sky. Okay, they probably jumped from the highway retaining wall, but it felt like they'd dropped from the sky. The first one landed right on the top of the front seat, between me and Reese. Knife raised, he went straight for Arizay.

I got up on one foot and thrust my crowbar where the sun don't shine. Mister Creepy, meet A Goose You'll Never Forget. Backup, bless his furry little heart, lunged, and took a bite out of Mister Creepy's set of fine, dangling accessories. Between the two of us, I like to think we ruined his day.

Something grabbed me by the hair and hauled me physically up and out of the car. I didn't even have time to scream as I saw the flash of knife, but there was a deafening series of shots, and whatever had grabbed me jerked. Then it fell, but unfortunately, it didn't let go, so I got pulled down with it. Mars, meet asphalt. Asphalt, meet face.

Lucy was there, swinging a tire iron like a three iron, and nearly taking the face off the next guy. I scrabbled, pulling my hair out of the twitching hand, and got to my feet. The one that had grabbed me had been thoroughly ventilated - head and chest - by Detective Reese. There were a couple more shots, and I saw a creeper hit the ground on the other side of the car.

Arizay scrambled over the door, dragging Reese with her. Reese had a cut across her hairline that was bleeding profusely. Three more creeps were coming towards us from the other side, and we'd lost the car.

"Run for the creek!" Lucy yelled.

Reese was stumbling even with Ari's help, so I grabbed her from my side, got her waistband in my fist, and hauled ass, donkey, mule, and every other quadruped I'd ever heard of. Lucy played linebacker like she'd been born to it, head down, elbow out, using her shoulders like battering rams. At least one of them, she threw into the air, and it landed on its head. That's when I realized that unlike the previous attacks, they had a full bench waiting to relieve injured players.

The four of us plus backup made it across the intersection to the creekbed twenty yards up. The other side of the highway, it was one of California's concrete drainage channels. On this side, it was still what Mother Nature had intended - filled with brush, rattlesnakes, scorpions, and lots and lots of litter. Lucy vaulted over the guard rail. Arizay played rear guard as the mere mortals hoofed it around to the sloped bank of dirt and weeds. She'd picked up the baseball bat, and was using it the way I'd seen Eli do a couple of times - nothing at all about good sportsmanship there.

"Mars." Reese got my attention. "Do you know how to use a gun?"

"Uh, technically," I answered. Dad had taught me the basics along with a warning that if he ever, Iever/I saw me pick up a gun for anything less than a life or death situation, I would be walking everywhere for the remainder of my childhood, and sitting down would no longer be an option.

"I can't make it, you take my gun, and you get them to the Slayer's house," Reese ordered. "You got me?"

"Not leaving you here for these things," I said.

We were in an awkward, stumbling, three-legged race down the middle of creekbed, twenty yards behind Lucy, who was making an enormous rackets, crashing through the brush, and . . . oh my holy Invisible Pink Unicorn was she setting fire to things?

"You do it," Reese ordered. "They don't care about me. They'll jump over me to get to Lucy and Ari. You get them out of here and get them to safety."

"Let's worry about that after we deal with my firebug client," I gasped. "LUCY, WHAT THE HELL ARE DOING?!"

Where had she gotten a lighter? Don't know, don't care. The bushes down here were creosote, and California's notorious for being a well watered desert with wildfires that make Vesuvius during an eruption look manageable.

"Come on!" Lucy yelled back. "Get ahead of the flames. It'll slow them down."

They, the hellbent homicidal eyeless creeps, were about fifty yards behind us. Topography apparently wasn't their strong suit.

"ARIZAY! COME ON!" Lucy screamed.

Lucy had left set fire to bushes about ten yards on either side of the middle of the creekbed, so as I dragged Reese through, the fire spread back towards the highway, out towards the neighborhoods on either side, in towards the center, and forwards towards us. It was already sending up an incredible amount of smoke.

Arizay came sprinting up behind us, jumped the last rank of creosote brush that had caught, and landed a few feet short of us. She looked behind us at the wall o'flame that now reached nearly ten feet high.

"Nice," she said, smiling. "That'll slow them down."

"Are you out of your minds?" I demanded. "You're going to set the entire county on fire!"

"Oh, mierde," Reese mumbled. "No amount of paperwork is going to get my ass out of this sling."

"What are you so worried about?" Lucy asked. "The flash flood will put it out as soon as it reaches here."

"Come on," Arizay said, taking Reese's arm and pulling her over her shoulders in a fireman's hold.

"Flash flood?" I asked stupidly.

"You didn't see it?" Lucy asked, surprised. "It was about five miles away when we exited the highway. If it's running at sixty miles an hour or so, we've got another two to three minutes before it gets here. So we should probably move."

Since the fire had nearly reached us while we were talking, and the creeps were starting to push through the brush in spots that hadn't caught yet, I was more than ready to move. Backup started hopping up and down, barking in alarm. We ran.

"How the hell did you see a flash flood five miles away at night?" I demanded, panting from the effort of my sprint.

"I think my eyesight's been getting better," Lucy said. "Maybe it's something to do with slaying vampires. You know, since they only come out at night."

Up ahead, in the darkness, I saw the bulk of another street passing over the creek. It was only six or seven feet above the creekbed, which meant the culvert would be several of those huge concrete pipes, channelling the flood waters into a ramped up version of a very, very large firehose. The fire wasn't spreading as fast as we were running, but it wasn't dawdling either. Far off, I could hear sirens starting. Lights from houses were coming on around us, and I saw a glint of reflection from the ground in front - a stream of water like someone had left a garden hose running. Only, as I watched, it doubled in size, and then doubled again.

"Lucy, that flood you ordered," I called. "It's h-"

No idea what I tripped on, but really, the fact that I'd gotten as far as I already had without a faceplant is nothing short of miraculous. I did, however, do a full length, arms out, Superman style, pratfall that, any other time of my life, I'd have been proud of. Instead, I hit hard, knocking the wind out of my lungs, and rattling my brains like dice in a cup.

Then I was unceremoniously grabbed around the waist and hauled like a sack of shapely yet fashionable potatoes by Lucy, who continued sprinting for the overpass. I heard Lucy's footsteps start to splash.

"Put me down," I gargled.

Lucy didn't argue. She just tipped me off her shoulder, kept one arm on me as I got my feet under me - ankle deep in the fast rising water - and I stumbled into a run, still unable to breathe.

Air would be nice, I thought, trying to make my lungs work. Any time now. Burning silver dots appeared in my vision, and then I finally got my diaphragm to suck in two full lungs of air, and they disappeared. The bridge was right ahead of us, and the creeps were right behind. Some of them were actually on fire. Let it not be said that they lacked devotion.

One of them reached for me, and Backup jumped, jaws open, bit down on the creep's wrist, and pulled him down into the streaming water. I had a chance to glance back, and sure enough, never mind the horde of crazed demonic killers behind us, Lucy's plan would work. The waters were uprooting the bushes and snuffing out the fires.

We reached the overpass, and my guess was right, the funneling of the flood waters gave them extra force. We were just at knee deep now, and any deeper, we'd probably be knocked off our feet.

"Here!" Lucy said, cupping her hands.

I didn't hesitate. I put my foot in her hands, and she launched me into an orbital trajectory. I landed on the street above, felt my ankle give, and rolled into it. Arizay was pulling herself up, one-handed, hauling Reese with the other. Desperate, I got to my feet to reach them. My ankle collapsed, and I went down on one knee, but hobbled as best I could to the rail. I grabbed Reese's wrist with both hands, put my bad foot against the wall, and used my weight to pull her over. Ari pulled herself up without further effort.

"Lucy?!" I yelled.

Lucy nearly brained me with a standing jump right in my direction. She grabbed for the railing, and I got ahold of her shirt sleeve.

"My arm!" she cried.

Dammit, she was using her injured arm. Ari dived for her too. Reese was sprawled on the street, trying to get her legs under her and not getting too far. As Ari and I tried to secure our holds on Lucy, the first creeper made it through the now hip deep water. It lunged for her and caught her by her leg.

Lucy screamed, and I saw her eyes widen in terror. This, when I'd never seen her well and truly scared before. She was now. If we lost our hold on her, the flash flood would sweep her away with the Bringers, and she was just as likely to die being battered and rolled as she was to be drowned, and if she did survive, there would just be another pack of those things waiting to cut her to pieces.

"VERONICA!"

Her arm was slipping through my grasp.

No. Not again. I would not lose her. Not like I'd lost so many others. NO.

Someone reached past us, bending out far enough to get both arms around Lucy's chest, just under her arms, and then just picked her up, and flipped her overhead onto the street. Lucy landed on her feet, stumbled, and then sat down hard.

"Xander, how about a hand?" she called.

"Ladies," a moderately cute guy with tousled dark hair slipped past us carrying a crossbow and a machete.

He pitched the crossbow to the young woman with him, and as a Bringer grabbed the rail and started to scale the culvert, he brought the machete down, hard, severing the things fingers. It fell with a hoarse shriek and was carried off by the flood. The woman had one foot up on the rail and even in the uncertain light was picking off Bringers one bolt at a time. One in the throat, one between its non-existent eyes, another through the ear when it turned its head.

"You know," the guy said, "I don't know whether to respect their focus or be annoyed that they won't take a hint. Fire and flood? Next thing on the list is famine, and it's not like we're inviting them to the backyard barbecue."

"I say we snub them at the next neighborhood watch meeting," the woman answered.

"Buffy?" Lucy asked, plaintively.

"That's me," she answered, taking aim and firing off another bolt.

At this point, the backyards on either side were well lit, the fires were almost completely out, and the flood was shoulder high. The last creeper in the creekbed sank with a bolt sticking out of one eye socket and didn't come back to the surface.

I stumbled back and sat down abruptly, feeling the shock from my tailbone to the base of my skull. The guy turned and considered us just as two more people - a redheaded woman and the man I figured had to be Mister Crumpet - came running up onto the street.

"Hi, sailor," the man said, hunkering down next to me. "I'm Xander. New in town?"

I looked up at him, aware that I was about half a centimeter from keeling over.

"My name is Veronica Mars," I recited. "Millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht."

And I keeled over.

_

Los Angeles - Reese

The hum of activity in the district headquarters dropped to about a quarter of its usual volume when Reese dragged herself back in. True to her word, once she'd made sure that both Arizay Reyes and Lucy Sinclair were in safe hands, she'd driven Veronica Mars back home and spent twenty minutes talking to her father, assuring him that a) Veronica was not in trouble, b) Veronica had actually aided law enforcement in a very serious matter, and c) someone would be in touch with him once this whole thing was figured out. She was fairly sure, though, that it would not be her, as even if she had a job on returning, it would probably be as apprentice broom pusher.

Crews met her halfway to the captain's office and gave her a considering look.

"I'm going to have to go with your first call," he told her. "This has been one long day."

"You have no idea," she answered.

The Slayer's little sister, Dawn Summers, had cleaned up the laceration on her forehead and put several butterfly closures on it. The knot below had shrunk down in size until it was only about an inch and a half across. It still throbbed like the devil and was turning some very saturated hues not normally found on skin. Like Mars, she was scraped, bruised, cut, bounced, and rattled until every single bit of her ached. Mars had commented that even her hair had hurt, which, considering a Bringer had grabbed her by her hair and hauled her five feet up, wasn't very surprising.

"Tidwell's in with someone right now," Crews told her. "I'm to bring you in as soon as you show. Here."

He held out a plastic bottle of fruit juice, the kind you could get fresh squeezed and had to shake before you drank. She didn't even ask. She just shook the bottle, unscrewed the cap, and drank. It was the best thing she had ever tasted. She chugged it all the way down and didn't lift the bottle from her lips until it was all gone.

"What was that?" she asked, amazed.

He gave her a little waggling head nod and quirk of a smile. "Apple, lemon, and ginger juice. I picked it up as soon as you said you were headed back."

It was a little after five in the morning, and she still hadn't been home. Though she had dropped off the car at her mother's neighbors, figuring Eli Navarro would still be there. Her mother had tutted over her, but there was literally no room at the inn, and she'd needed to get back to headquarters anyway.

"Who's he in with?" she asked.

"You know, that's a very good question," her partner answered. "I have no idea who they are, but one of them is British, and the other is German."

"Wha?"

"Come on."

Tidwell's office was a mess, and it was extremely crowded with two guests plus Crews and Reese. Tidwell looked up when Crews opened the door and Reese came in, and relief washed away whatever expression had been on his face. He got to his feet, came around his desk, displacing the handsome young man who stood at attention, and enveloped Reese in a bearhug.

"You're okay you're okay you're okay you're okay," he repeated, crushing her against him.

"Uh, captain," she managed. "Can't breathe."

Tidwell released her and then seemed to realize that there were several witnesses to his behavior. He turned to face the woman sitting opposite his desk, and put an arm around Reese's shoulders. He squeezed her against him in a show of camaraderie.

"The Los Angeles Police Department cares very deeply about the wellbeing of all our staff," he told his guest.

"I'm gratified to see it displayed so affirmatively," the woman answered. While shorter than average, with her trim silver hair, five thousand dollar silk suit, and ice blue eyes, she was nothing short of intimidating.

Oh, yes. British. Hard ass. Old school. The woman in front of her was a terrifying combination of a stern mother superior, her junior year English and Composition teacher, and her paternal grandmother, now ten years dead. Tidwell released Reese, and went back around his desk. Crews managed to squeeze into the office and shut the door behind him.

The other guest, the handsome young man in a tailored black suit and custom sunglasses, took a stance directly in front of the office door, to prevent anyone else from entering. Reese studied him for a moment and realized he was one of the soldiers from the substation the previous night. And then she realized in shock that it really had been just the previous night, less than twelve hours ago.

"Detective Reese," the British woman repeated.

Reese turned back around and caught herself, a little dizzy.

"I wanted to thank you in person," the woman said, holding out her hand. "While I cannot go into detail, your heroism over the past day in protecting those girls from an international terrorism plot has been noted and heard at the highest levels."

"Terrorism?" Reese asked, feeling stupid.

"That's what they're saying," Tidwell told her, punching the air with his index finger for emphasis. "A bunch of crazy jihadists-"

"Separatists," the woman corrected.

"Separatists," Tidwell continued, "were out to undermine the foundation of our American freedoms, terrify people with random killings, spark panic, and sow confusion, and you - you, Detective Reese - foiled their nefarious plans."

"Nefari . . ." Reese trailed off, looking between Tidwell, Crews, and the two guests. "In Oakland and Neptune? Are you punking me? Am I being punked?"

Crews made a thoughtful moue and shook his head. "To the best of my knowledge, no."

"Please understand," the woman continued, "that the true nature of these incidents cannot be known outside of a very small circle. Therefore, all future coverage will refer only to an outbreak of gang violence in Oakland and Neptune and a horrific tragedy at the police substation. I am deeply sorry, Detective Reese, but no one outside of this office will speak of your heroism to you, and no one at all will publicly recognize your actions. I regret the necessity of this, but those I represent will make arrangements so that you will at least not suffer any negative consequences. We will also do what we can to arrange a reward which, not what you truly deserve, will at least afford you some financial recompense."

Reese considered her words for a moment. "So . . . I'm not being fired? I still have a job?"

"Of course you do!" Tidwell protested. "What the hell do you take us for? New York City?"

"And . . . no one is ever going to speak of this again, but . . . I get money," she said.

"There may well be a point when we call upon you again," the woman told her, "as you are a rare initiate who survived introduction to this shadow world. But, for the time being, once my associate and I leave this office, no one will speak of these events to you again."

"And . . . how much money . . . do I get?" Reese asked, considering.

The woman named a figure that made Reese's eyes go wide. It was a number that instantly eliminated a large number of constant worries at the back of her head. Student loans - gone. Mortgage - gone. Retirement - assured. Trip to Hawaii - now boarding.

"I'm okay with this," she said. "I am okay with this right here. I'd like that noted for the record. I am totally okay with the circumstances as explained to me at this time and in this place."

"And again, I am gratified," the woman said. "You'll find some paperwork at your desk, Detective, regarding the matter. The numbers of a local attorney and accountant are included. Please address any questions you have to them. And now, we will be going."

She walked the two guests to the lobby.

"You were kind of shy with names back there," she stated.

"You may call me M," the woman told her. "And I do think that at some point we will be back in touch."

"M," Reese repeated. "Okay. Glad to meet you."

She held out her hand to the young man. Instead of shaking it, he took it by her fingers and bowed over it, clicking his heels together.

"Graf von und zum Hentzau, at your service," he said.

Crews was right. He had a German accent underneath some very polished English.

"Hentzau?" She paused, trying to scrape facts together from an exhausted brain. "That's in Ruritania, isn't it? From that book?"

The count gave her a tolerant smile. "That's how most Americans become aware of my home. You are welcome at any time, Detective."

He held out a card to her, printed with his full name and title.

She was still staring at the card when she wandered back into the office. Crews stood up from his desk and grabbed his coat.

"You ready for me to run you home?" he asked.

"What?" She looked up.

"Tidwell ordered you home hours ago," he said. "Remember?"

Confused, she went to the captain's office, knocked on the door, and opened it.

"Hey, Captai-"

"What the hell are you still doing here?" Tidwell demanded, getting to his feet. "You are not to put a toe in this building, any police vehicle, or anywhere near a case until I get a medical clearance on you. If it had been up to me, I'd have strapped you to a gurney and sent you to the ER for observation after that explosion, but no, you gotta be all macho and unreasonable an-"

She shut the door on her captain's tirade, thought for a moment, and returned to Crews.

"Medical clearance?" she asked.

"You were pretty banged up," he said, watching her with concerned eyes. "Even if you were outside of the substation when the gas main blew. I know you were friends with some of the people there, Reese."

"Yeah," she said softly. "Yeah, I was."

"Come on," he told her. "I'll run you home and tell you about the news."

"New?" she asked. "What news?"

Archeologists in Canada discovered some thousand year old squash seeds, and they were able to grow them. Turns out, it's a type of squash the rest of the world has never seen before, and hey, squash are technically a fruit."

She followed him, shaking her head at what a sucker she'd been.

_

Neptune - Mars

I must have looked like something the cat dragged in after pulling it backward through a knothole and chewing it to a frazzle, because Logan of all people insisted on taking me to my dad's office after school.

"Long night," I explained.

"You know," he said, keeping an eye on the road, "long nights usually mean dark shadows under the eyes, maybe a pale face, trouble staying awake, all of which you have, but the bandages, bruises, scrapes, and what looks like a broken ankle don't usually fall under that rubric."

Ah, Logan, arch-nemesis of my clumsy attempts to explain away something that defied explanation. I sighed and then yawned hugely.

"How'd pre-calc go?" he asked.

"I don't even want to know," I answered. "Luckily, Mr. Borscht-"

"Borschai," he corrected me.

"Whatever. Mr. Beet Soup owes me for recovering some blackmail snaps," I said. "So, maybe he'll let me retake the test."

"Don't see that going on your application essay," Logan observed.

Dear Stanford Acceptance Committee,

I never believed something like this would happen to me . . .

No, I didn't see me putting it in there either.

Dad had visitors when we got there. My spidey-sense perked up as soon as I saw the car. A Bentley. Not that there are no Bentleys in Neptune, but this was some sort of rare, coddled, vintage beast that even Logan raised an eyebrow at and whistled over.

Inside, three people waited for us. Numero Uno - or Numera Una, I should say - stately British lady who looked like she could knight people or whack off their heads with the same sword depending on her mood. Item B - a very well heeled older man in a wool coat, carrying a briefcase that I estimated as costing ten K easy. And Thing #3 - a woohoo-yowza hottie in tailored suit and sweet shades acting like a bodyguard.

"Holy- Hentzau?" Logan said, startled.

"Holy Hentzau?" I asked, looking up at him. "Is that like a new thing, Batman?"

Bodyguard smiled just a little, and I spotted a bruise above his hairline and a bandage across the back of his hand. He'd seen action the previous night. Hmmm.

"Uh." Which is weird, because Logan is almost never caught flat-footed. "Veronica, may I introduce the Graf von und zum Hentzau, Rupert Alexander Wilhelm Dmitri."

"Just Hentzau, please," the man said, leaning forward and shaking Logan's hand. "It's good to see you, Logan. My deepest condolences on the loss of your mother."

Logan glanced down, and I could tell he was covering up both surprise and pain.

"Yeah, thanks. Um, Hentzau, this is my classmate, Veronica Mars," he introduced back.

"Hi."

I got a bow over my hand and the briefest of kisses on my knuckles.

Veronica approve. Veronica appove much.

"How do you . . . ?" I started to ask Logan.

"Remember that remake of Prisoner of Zenda Dad did five years ago?" Logan asked me. "The production company got the chance to film at the actual castle of Zenda, which is in Hentzau's possession. Since it was summer, I tagged along, and Hentzau showed me around a couple of times."

Oh, right. Not a lot of pictures being made in Ruritania, mostly because the movie producers found out that the Powers That Be out there do not take certain things, like bad manners, lightly at all. The paparazzi were chased out of places, sometimes with dogs, and there was a story that Logan's dad, Aaron Echols got the shit kicked out of him by someone so bad that production was halted for a week while he healed up enough to hide the bruises under makeup.

Aaaaaand Mars's brain suddenly put the numbers together, looking between Logan and Hentzau and realized that Hentzau had been the one to kick the shit out of Aaron Echols. I suddenly felt great affection and respect for the man.

Dad cleared his throat before it could go any further.

"Veronica, these two people are here about a job you took on," he told me, indicating Thing One and Thing Two.

Detective Reese had somehow talked my dad into accepting that I was a very brave and helpful citizen, and that he really shouldn't bug me about what happened the previous night. Don't know how she did it, because she insisted on talking to him alone, but I was still impressed.

"Miss Mars," the lady said smiling warmly. "I understand you were instrumental in helping a young girl by the name of Lucy Sinclair get to safety last night."

"Lucy?" I repeated. "Yeah. She's still okay, right?"

"To the best of my knowledge, she is both safe and very happy," the woman replied.

She paused for a moment, considering something.

"Hentzau, would you be so kind as to wait outside with Mister Echols?" she asked.

"Of course, madam," Hentzau answered. "Logan?"

Logan frowned, worried, looking between me and the lady.

"It's cool," I told him. "If you hear screams, it's only because I had to tell Dad how I did in pre-Calc."

Once they were out of the room, it turned more serious.

"Burl Preston, Miss Mars," the suit introduced himself. Serious flesh-eating lawyer vibe coming off this guy. "I understand that Miss Sinclair commissioned you in an investigation yesterday into the identity of her father."

I glanced at Dad. He looked wary.

"I'm not at liberty to discuss my work without my client's direct permission," I answered.

The woman raised an eyebrow, and the smallest of smiles tilted the corners of her lips up.

"I understand your reluctance," Lawyer Preston answered. "Your devotion to professional ethics is laudable. However, I must impress upon you certain facts. The first is that, while Miss Sinclair's mother retains du jour custody of her, my firm and I act as her true guardians. She is unaware of this, believing that we merely handle the trust fund her father established for her."

He had a file open and handed me a document. I took it and read the contents, signed, stamped, notarized, and in every other way as official as the Pope's birth certificate.

"As her guardian," he continued, "I am therefore releasing you from Miss Sinclair's commission. You may, of course, keep the payment she delivered to you. We will reimburse her once we've re-established direct communication with her."

"She's a sweet kid," I told him, eyeing both him and the lady. Funny how the lady hadn't given her name. "And she's about as lonesome for a family as can be. Just because she's not my client anymore doesn't mean I'll stop looking. She deserves something."

I heard my dad murmur "that's my girl" very softly.

Preston and the lady exchanged a glance, and he deferred to her.

"Miss Mars, it is entirely understandable that Lucy wishes to know who her father is. She's been kept in the dark her entire life, and her mother is not, shall we say, the most insightful or emotionally stable of individuals. However, there's a very good reason for this secrecy."

She took out a file of her own, opened it, and handed it to me.

"I believe I can depend on both of your discretion," she said. "When you realize the gravity of the situation."

I took the folder and opened it to a color headshot of a handsome red headed man with a full beard and eyes the color of jade. He had laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. He was outside, on a sailing boat, smiling broadly. The man practically had "World's Most Awesome Dad" tattoed on him, except for the part where that title was saved for my own dad.

I didn't recognize him, but Dad did.

He went from wary to scared.

"How many people know about this?" he asked.

"Outside this room?" the woman asked. "None at all. Hentzau is tangential to the matter, which is why I excused him. He will also remain ignorant until the appropriate time."

"I don't get it," I said.

"Fifteen years ago," Dad said, looking like he had a story, "this man was heir to the last inheritable absolute monarchy in Europe. Then, in the course of a few weeks, he takes sick. So sick that doctors can't do a damn thing for him. He dies, his father goes senile with grief, and this guy's younger sister, who'd been waiting silently in the wings, suddenly becomes regent for her father, and then queen, in less than six months."

It took me a little bit to piece the puzzle together. Call it leftover exhaustion from the night before. When it finally hit me, I felt my skin go cold.

"Were her parents married?" I asked. "Is she legitimate?"

The woman in front of us nodded silently.

Holy Hentzau, no wonder this was being hushed up.

"What about the qu-"

Preston held up his hands to stop me. "Please. In these matters, we take great care not to mention names, titles, or any identifying reference more than once or twice. We are aware that the invested party has some suspicions, but those have never been substantiated. In this matter, young Miss Sinclair must remain ignorant for her own safety. If she is her father's daughter, and we've no doubt she is, she would be spurred to seek justice."

I exchanged another look with my father.

"We are not cold-hearted," the woman told my father. "Nor are we amoral. We believe very firmly that when the young lady is of age, she will be given the truth and supported in whatever choice she makes. However, events within the country in question may render our view on the matter moot. For the time being, we wish her every protection and resource. So, we will take great care in also protecting any allies she may have acquired on her own."

Dad and I exchanged another look, this one freighted with lots and lots of meaning.

"Mister Mars," Burl Preston said, "I understand that your work as a private investigator merits a good deal of respect."

"I'm not sure if taking pictures of cheating spouses and running cellphone records merits much of anything," Dad said carefully, "but I'm good at what I do."

"My law firm handles a great deal of business from people within the movie business - actors, producers, directors, and such - and many of those people keep a second home here in Neptune."

"They do," Dad agreed.

"Therefore, we would like to put you on retainer for future cases," Preston said, handing Dad his card. "The offered monthly fee is written on the back."

Dad flipped the card over, and I saw his eyebrows go way, way up. He cleared his throat, blinked, and then handed the card back.

"I'm sorry," he said. "But I can't accept this."

Stunned, my mouth fell open.

"Mister Mars," the woman said gently. "This is not a bribe or a purchase. This is a reward for Miss Mars's work protecting the true heir to the throne of Ruritania, and it is . . . funding against a rainy day. There may well be a time when we call upon your expertise in protecting the young lady from iniquitous enemies."

Dad thought about it. He pressed his lips together.

"Put half of it in a college fund for Veronica here and write a damn good letter of recommendation for her," he said. "On official letterhead from I don't care where, but it better make Stanford hyperventilate when they see it. Of the other half, put half of that in a discretionary fund for either of us to pull if and when it comes to that. The remaining quarter is my monthly retainer."

"Done," the woman said.

"Done," Burl Preston answered.

Dad handed me the card, and I checked the number. Then I swallowed and made sure I was still breathing.

"Also, you're going to replace my daughter's car with something new, safe, and boring. It could be a hybrid."

"Done."

Car, I thought. House instead of apartment. Bills paid off. Health insurance for both of us. My college fund restored. Stanford back in the picture. Savings. Retirement. LAW SCHOOL!

Duncan.

My heart stopped for a moment. Duncan and little Grace. I could make sure the plan went through and they'd be okay.

"Miss Mars."

I looked up. She was studying me again, and I was aware that I was flexing my hand into a fist and out over and over, one of my dead giveaways.

"Yes?"

"You're considering Stanford for college?" she asked.

"That's the plan," I managed. "If they'll take someone who bombed her last pre-Calc test.

Her eyes narrowed in thought.

"I'd like you to consider the possibility of attending Queen Flavia University in Strelsau," she said. "I'm on the matriculation board there, and we're working on recruiting more American students, so long as they meet the entrance requirements. If you do, you'll be offered a full scholarship plus living stipend. We usually assign our overseas students a mentor, to look out for them. Hentzau has agreed to mentor a group next school year. We could arrange to assign you to him."

"Uh . . . wuh . . ."

I looked at Dad, who shrugged expressionlessly. That was his code for "this is too important for me to sway you on. Make up your own mind."

"I'll think about it," I told her.

"That's all I ask."

That night, Dad and I ate out at our favorite Italian restaurant. He even allowed me half a glass of wine. Which we clinked together in a toast.

"To Miss Lucy Sinclair," Dad said, "and all the girls like her out there. May their troubles be small and their goodness always shine."

Yeah, there's a reason I love my dad like I do.


End file.
